Troy,

Another alternative, if you wanted to keep the captured swarm as a separate
hive (#2), would be to take a few good frames of brood from a strong hive or
two, along with a frame or two of honey and pollen, and place them in the
captured colony's brood box.  They, already having a queen, would get a
great start.  The other original hive (#1), being queenless, as long as they
have a good supply of fresh eggs (or larvae less than three days old) will
start emergency queen cells and raise a new queen.  It would be a setback
for them as you would be looking at about three weeks before the new queen
emerges, mates and returns to the hive to start laying eggs.

I had thought of this option as well, but when I pulled my Blooming Schedule
records I kept out of the dusty folder, I see that the Mesquite should be in
bloom about now around Midland/Odessa (though with your dry winter and early
spring I don't know how good the flow will be), along with the other
May/June wild flowers.  Anyway, if you made two hives you probably wouldn't
harvest as much from both of them as you would the one hive that was merged
with the swarm.  But, it _is_ another option.

PS - Tried emailing to you personally using the address on your original
list message (hence my first request), and again this morning to your email
you sent to me personally, but none would go through.  Contacted
[log in to unmask] and they responded they had a Troy C. as a subscriber,
but no one with the address you're using ([log in to unmask]).

--David Scribner <[log in to unmask]> - Ballwin, MO, USA
  Niche on the Net! - <www.bigfoot.com/~dscribner>


>I took a bee hive out of a building last week ,put them in a brood box with
>3 frames of brood .the next evening they were back on the building in
>several swarms I determined that I destroyed the queen so I took another
>queen from another hive packed her into a cage and taped her to a wall
>under the larger swarm and finally got them all into the box happy.Now my
>question, can this old hive that the queen came from and the new hive that
>I caught with the old hives queen be combined without disrupting the scent?
>                                 thanks for any thoughts on scents.
>                                       Boy What A Mess, Troy C
>                                      Permian Basin Beekeepers
>