Thanks for the responses. I have a feeling there may be two virgins in the colony as the swarm returned. The original queen and some brood was moved away into another nuc and have been doing just fine. This is a cast I'm dealing with. Hopefully they returned for good and the weather (or other reasons) will put them off trying again. Just hope it's out of their system. I have two queens on order for Tuesday/Wednesday.
Just to fill in the gaps:The situation:
Hive - 11 frame Abelo poly national brood box with QE and three supers on top. Top super nearly full, middle super half way, bottom super just frames of foundation. First super went on when they had 7 frames of brood.
- 25.04.2020 - 2019 queen clipped
- 02.05.2020 - colony attempted swarm. Found queen on floor. Put her and plenty of bees into 6 frame nuc. Gave two frames of brood and some stores. Went through original hive and took down all QCs we could find. Gave original colony frames with foundation to replace brood frames. Stores came from what I had in storage. Heard virgin queen piping.
- 09.05.2020 - original hive swarmed again. We saw where they went and when the bees settled down I set up a bait hive near them as they were far up in a tree. After we returned and had some lunch we carried out inspection and saw another spike in activity in the apiary. Hive was bearding like crazy. Assuming the swarm came back as it wasn't in the tree later on and the brood box was chocker during inspection despite the supers being around 50% or less capacity.
Took down more QCs. They all seemed small and unimpressive.
Even at 10pm there were bees clumped in the tunnel entrance floor.
Will have a look now to see if they have all gone inside.
Just to fill in the gaps:The situation:
Hive - 11 frame Abelo poly national brood box with QE and three supers on top. Top super nearly full, middle super half way, bottom super just frames of foundation. First super went on when they had 7 frames of brood.
- 25.04.2020 - 2019 queen clipped
- 02.05.2020 - colony attempted swarm. Found queen on floor. Put her and plenty of bees into 6 frame nuc. Gave two frames of brood and some stores. Went through original hive and took down all QCs we could find. Gave original colony frames with foundation to replace brood frames. Stores came from what I had in storage. Heard virgin queen piping.
- 09.05.2020 - original hive swarmed again. We saw where they went and when the bees settled down I set up a bait hive near them as they were far up in a tree. After we returned and had some lunch we carried out inspection and saw another spike in activity in the apiary. Hive was bearding like crazy. Assuming the swarm came back as it wasn't in the tree later on and the brood box was chocker during inspection despite the supers being around 50% or less capacity.
Took down more QCs. They all seemed small and unimpressive.
Even at 10pm there were bees clumped in the tunnel entrance floor.
Will have a look now to see if they have all gone inside.
Jazz