Gday brains trust.
I just caught my own swarm from a very productive and passive hive. Currently housed in a nuc. Can I re introduce it back to its original hive. ?? And if so will they accept the queen or kill her and continue to make there own. It’s been 36 hours since I caught the swarm
The old queen left with the swarm and after that long they probably would kill her. If you reunite them they will probably just swarm again.
I did a reactive split of 3 frames after I found swarm cells. About 3hours before they swarmed. I guess the swarm comand has already been issued. There were capped swarm cells
Yeah once the cells are capped it’s usually too late, I did a split last week after finding an uncapped queen cell.
Think I got them just in time as they haven’t swarmed.
I agree with Steve, more than likely the colony will kill the old queen as they will be hearing the new queen prior to emerging. If a hive has already made queen cells to a large extent you have lost the advantage so in that situation I would locate the queen and take her into a strong split and leave all the queen cells in the hive, terminate the smallest of the queen cells down to just two or three remaining.
I haven’t had much luck in recombining a split back into a hive without adding another box to increase the space in the hive, which could be the cause of the swarming in the first place. When I have recombined a hive back together I use the newspaper method and terminate the old queen a day before the merging.
Cheers James
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Thanks for info 
. Pretty much what I thought. But wanted some confirmation. Much appreciated 
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