Swarmed hive

[omnimirage]

Yesterday, one of my oversized nucleus hive swarmed. The bees flew into a branch in my front yard, and in my panic grabbed the best thing I could find, a damaged hive scooped the bees into that. The bees easily moved into the super, I dropped my strainer into the honey so I gave them that to entice them. That night, I moved the hive to a more sheltered location. Now it's lunch time, and I see there's about three dozen bees where the bush once was.

I'm not sure what to do now. I have a empty nucleus that isn't damaged, I think it'd be best to move them into that, but I'm not sure. Last time I moved a weak hive into a new box, the bees didn't transition well and mostly died. Should I do anything about the bees at the branch? They may have just fell onto the ground when I moved them last night. There's still a bit of activity at the super itself. What should I do about the hive that they swarmed from? It's still crowded, combwise, but there's few bees left in there now. Should the swarmed bees, and the bees left behind, all have a queen? Do I essentially have two colonies now?

 

[BeeJayBee]

Did you see the 'swarm' emerge from the other hive? If so, is it still overcrowded?

If it was indeed a swarm, rather than a colony absconding because it's run out of space, I'd have thought there's little chance for a new queen to mate at this time of year.

Whatever you decide to do it has to be relevant to your time of year, and you're in the middle of autumn. You need to get these bees settled for the winter.

 

[jeff33]

Yesterday, one of my oversized nucleus hive swarmed. The bees flew into a branch in my front yard, and in my panic grabbed the best thing I could find, a damaged hive scooped the bees into that. The bees easily moved into the super, I dropped my strainer into the honey so I gave them that to entice them. That night, I moved the hive to a more sheltered location. Now it's lunch time, and I see there's about three dozen bees where the bush once was.

I'm not sure what to do now. I have a empty nucleus that isn't damaged, I think it'd be best to move them into that, but I'm not sure. Last time I moved a weak hive into a new box, the bees didn't transition well and mostly died. Should I do anything about the bees at the branch? They may have just fell onto the ground when I moved them last night. There's still a bit of activity at the super itself. What should I do about the hive that they swarmed from? It's still crowded, combwise, but there's few bees left in there now. Should the swarmed bees, and the bees left behind, all have a queen? Do I essentially have two colonies now?

They are still on the branch because they can still smell the queen pheromones. You could have left the box where you put the swarm in near the branch so they would have gone into it once the swarm settled. If you have moved it far away they won,t find it but they might go back to the original hive.

 

[Arfermo]

Spray the branches with WD40 or similar and the bees will go home.

 

[omnimirage]

I ended setting up an empty hive where the branch is, so that swarms can possibly go in there in the future, and to doubly provide shelter for all the bees that frequent there. Even days afterwards, bees are still mingling there. I opened up the swarm hive, and the bees look like they're going strong. They've occupied one frame entirely, the one with the honey strainer in it, and have already developed some amount of comb on a frame. I saw no reason to disturb them. In two days time, rain will be coming in. I'm going to seal up the damaged hive with duct tape, to protect them against it. After this rain has passed, I'm going to move them into a smaller nucleus.

I looked at the hive where they originally swarmed from, and holy moly, here are some pictures:

http://imgur.com/a/RRyKQ

This hive was originally a swarm I captured off a branch. It was quite weak and fragile at the time, I wasn't able to secure it's comb without removing the branch, so I decided to leave it in there. I went to open it the other day, but it was difficult to pry off the lid and unstucking it disturbed the bees, so I left it, the following morning is when they swarmed. Apparently they've had a huge boom recently. I wonder if it's some season thing, I've noticed my hives have all been floushring here. There's a lot of bees in here, so could there be queen cells in here somewhere?

I'm really unsure how to proceed with this mess. How would you attend to this?

 

[dclewis]

You are located in Australia arn't you, so you are in mid autumn right now so very late for swarms.

I should make contact with some local beekeepers if I were you and get some advice from them.