>Last year after 20 years beekeeping I encountered my first                     
>queenless swarm. It was a ragged, flighty mass of bees covering                
>the corner of a house roof.                                                    
                                                                                
We had a similar problem once with the second swarm we ever collected.  The     
swarm had landed on a bicycle path and someone had run over it, killing the     
queen.  The bees just wouldn't stay in the box.  It took us a while to figure   
out that the queen was dead, but my husband eventually found her and put her    
body in the box.  After that the bees went right in.  When we got home, we      
gave them a frame of brood.  They made their own queen and lived happily ever   
after (to the best of my knowledge...).  We named the hive "Off the Beaten      
Path".                                                                          
                                                                                
Shawna