Swarm returned to hive

[SixFooter]

I had a hive seemingly swarm and form the usual swarm rugby ball shape in a tree about 10m away. They stayed there for a couple of hours then went back into the hive. I opened it up and found a sealed supercedure cell. So my theory is that the Queen is being superceeded and the swarm was a mistake and queenless, so they came back. Is that likely or is there another explanation ?
Is there anything I need to do ?

 

[Erichalfbee]

Is the queen still in the hive?
I had one similar. Couldn’t find the queen and was wondering why they had gone back.
I found the queen on the ground under the entrance in a small knot of bees. Not clipped. Just didn’t go with the bees.

 

[beeno]

I had a hive seemingly swarm and form the usual swarm rugby ball shape in a tree about 10m away. They stayed there for a couple of hours then went back into the hive. I opened it up and found a sealed supercedure cell. So my theory is that the Queen is being superceeded and the swarm was a mistake and queenless, so they came back. Is that likely or is there another explanation ?
Is there anything I need to do ?

My theory is that you missed the primary swarm. You have a virgin in there that was not ready to swarm and one or more QCs.

 

[Natureboy44]

Is the queen still in the hive?
I had one similar. Couldn’t find the queen and was wondering why they had gone back.
I found the queen on the ground under the entrance in a small knot of bees. Not clipped. Just didn’t go with the bees.

Exactly this just recently happened to me original queen was left in front of hive in a small ball of bees and swarm was off in the trees but returned to hive leaving the queen left outside.

 

[WoodenBeam]

Had one yesterday do something similar. Split last week, open Q/cell left in original colony, had been due to return today to remove excess Q/cells and had it reported yesterday colony had swarmed. I was in the area so stopped off 20 minutes after receiving the call. No swarm.....however a few bees were at the location of said swarm so don’t doubt the presence of a swarm.
Went through all colonies at the apiary, suspect colony certainly wasn’t missing any bees (or any other colony), marked cell remained, no hatched missed cells from previous inspection so continued with removal of new cells so will now wait & see..........