In article <<[log in to unmask]>, you wrote:
> Here's one that I can't explain. I had a hive swarm yesterday. After
> they left, I inspected the hive and found that they had taken all of the
> honey in the brood chamber with them. They left the food super and honey
> super alone. About 45 min later they returned and covered the front of
> the hive. Hoping to salvage some of the hive, I did a split and remove 3
> frames and brood to a nuc. All seemed to be going ok, but this morning I
> took a look at the hive and noticed that there was a small fist sized
> cluster of bees underneath the hive. I captured this mini swarm, and put
> it with the rest of the bees in the nuc. I made sure that when I put
> frames in the nuc from the original hive that I chose one that had a
> good queen cell on it.  My question is this what I should have done, or
> should I have taken another approach to this matter.
 
I bet what happened is the queen couldn't leave with the swarm (was she
clipped?) and the swarm returned for that reason.  I also bet the ball of
bees was where the queen was, if so she's now in the nuc.
 
The best thing to do if you know where the queen is is to make them think
they swarmed, place the queen+the "outside" bees + more bees from inside
in a new hive without brood.  If you take enough bees into the "swarm"
hopefully they won't send out afterswarms.
 
The bees in the nuc with the queen cell _may_ swarm itself if the old
queen is in fact still with them.  You may want to look for her.
 
-Mike