Hi,
I live on the mid-north coast of NSW. I am brand new to bee keeping and a friend gave me a small swarm he captured 2 days ago.
The swarm was delivered to me in a 5 frame nuc box. We put it where my hive will go and opened the entrance. The bees seem to settle in that afternoon. The next day (yesterday) we found about 30 bees huddled together on the grass near the hive. The queen was amongst them. We scooped her up and put her near the entrance and she along with the other bees walked back into the hive.
This happened again today but this time we found them about 20m away from the hive. We put her at the entry again and she walked back inside. I cut a piece of queen excluder and put it across the entrance to stop her escaping again.
What would cause her to walk away and not fly away?
If you can beg, borrow or buy a frame of uncapped brood that may help her to stay in the hive, both her and the bees will adopt the brood as belonging to the hive.
A queen fully loaded with seaman and eggs is too heavy to fly away. When a hive swarms the queen is out on a diet by the colony to reduce her weight but even then she can only fly a short distance from the hive, sometimes as little as 50 meters…
Cheers
If the swarm was small it could have been a secondary swarm that would have left with a virgin queen that could be attempting her mating flights and getting disoriented perhaps?
