>And why, then, did the bees wait a few
> minutes to come out of the nuc box, after acting so
> much like the queen was inside?
>
> Eugene
>
Another possibility: had the nuc box been standing in the sun?  I have had a
swarm come back out of a hive that was just too hot.  (That would not happen
with the weather that we are suffering today - and have been suffering since
1st May!).

I think that when 'good' swarms leave after a night or two in  the hive,
this is almost invariably because they are headed by an unmated, or not
fully mated, new queen - she takes off on a mating flight and the rest go
with her (they have no future without her).

The reason that some of these swarms are so large may be that a colony with
a clipped queen prepares to swarm, the queen is lost and then the first
virgin to emerge heads a huge swarm because by this time most of the brood
has hatched.  The same could happen where a queen dies or is accidentally
killed by the beekeeper.

Peter Edwards
[log in to unmask]
www.stratford-upon-avon.freeserve.co.uk/

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