swarm 5 days after new queen introduction

[richiel100]

Advice please

I introduced a new mated queen (clipped and marked) in a cage to what I thought was a queenless national hive.

I released the queen yesterday with the bees seeming to me (newbee) calm around her introduction age.

Today I witnessed a swarm depart, gather 20m away and then upon my return with some gear 5 mins later the bees had returned to the hive and were all making their way back in.

My thoughts: Have i missed a virgin queen in the hive or an emergency queen cell(i did go through before intorducing the queen and shook all frames)

They are clearly intent on swarming, is there anything I can do to prevent this.

All thoughts welcome
Rich

 

[plumberman]

Can you give us a bit more history - in particular

1) why was the hive queenless? Had they attempted to swarm before and you did an AS?
2) How did you know the hive was queenless?

If the bees are in swarm mode then they will often go at the slightest opportunity. Your investment may well be in the grass in front of the hive surrounded by a golf ball sized cluster of bees.

 

[richiel100]

more history. Long story .........

We found capped queen cell 2 weeks ago. made the mistake of knocking down all queencells even though no eggs or larvae seen just sealed brood.

Upon next inspection several emergency queen cells but no young larvae to make a viable queen.

Knocked down emergency queen cells and decided to get a mated queen

Then back to the first post...

 

[REDWOOD]

Bees that swarm and return to the hive usually happens when a clipped queen leaves with the swarm, she gets lost in the grass and the bees return, if this is the case there must have been a queen or queen cells in the hive, but if this is the case the bees would have killed your new queen so a strange one this, you need to look in the hive and try and find the new queen, did you see a small ball of bees in the grass when they swarmed

 

[richiel100]

no sign of bees on ground- they are on hardstanding so pretty sure i would have seen that

 

[MuswellMetro]

had the similar
killed a drone layer of five weeks, bees turned nasty no queen cells,

requeened two days later with a new queen,tab off day two, bees very calm....she left and was recovered in a swarm on day 7

very few bees left, and the are very nasty (ie queenless) but there is a very possibilty the drone layer laid a viable egg and i have a capped scrub queen cells somewhere in there....but too few bees to be worried as they are also very old..........a visit to BP seems the best solution

 

[plumberman]

I'm assuming that <2 colonies means you have only one colony, which limits your options. Personally I would

1) See if you can find your queen- either in or out of the hive. If you do find her, recage her and put her back in the hive. In an ideal world I would "bank" her with another colony, and follow as below. If not, you could risk releasing her again in a few days.
2) if your bought queen has disappeared, you really need to put a test frame of eggs/young larvae in to see whether your hive is truly queenless. It is very easy to miss a queen cell and it is possible you have a virgin present, and I assume possible that rather than kill your new queen they attempted to swarm with her. If they produce emergency queen cells you could allow one of them to develop as a replacement queen. They are not necessarily all "scrub" queens.