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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #13016  by AdamD
 08 Aug 2022, 17:55
On Saturday I was at my out apiary and noticed a few bees on one side of a hive. Lo and behold a young queen was there with a cup-full of attendants.
Image
I marked her pink (wing as well as thorax!) for easy identification and she flew back to the side of the hive. It does look like a small mating swarm that perhaps got lost whilst I was stomping around the apiary? :?
Anyway, my guess was that she would fly off into the distance so with nothing to lose, I caged her and popped her into a mini-nuc and swept the bees in with her and left it by the big hive. Would they stay with her?

No.
The next day she was surrounded by only a few attendants so she has gone into a mini-nuc from which the queen had been taken from a few days earlier. With queen excluder over the entrance, I'll leave her in there for a couple of days and then let her fly. With luck she will come back.
Now the task is to find where she came from. :roll:
 #13017  by Alfred
 08 Aug 2022, 18:13
Nice looking bees whatever the incident.
 #13019  by MickBBKA
 08 Aug 2022, 23:05
Alfred wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 18:13
Nice looking bees whatever the incident.
:shock: Way to stripy for my neck of the woods ;)
 #13051  by AdamD
 15 Aug 2022, 10:26
So, the queen was constrained in a small hive for 3 days with queen excluder over the entrance. I then opened the entrance. Three days later when I checked again, she was gone.
I still have no idea where she came from!