Playing it safe

I had a swarm this afternoon.  I am still not sure where it came from but probably the crazy hive 4 I wrote about last time - where four days ago I found several frames of eggs but no obvious queen, a newly opened queen cell and several sealed queen cells, a combination I still haven't worked out.

Unusually this swarm landed on my side of the fence, in my blackcurrant bush (they usually prefer my neighbour's garden)   I noticed more bees than I would expect flying round the blackcurrant flowers and when I went to investigate I found this.

I watched for a while as I have two bait hives set up - one about 2m away and one about 20m away.  When I checked there were only a few scouts investigating each.  It was very hard to tell but I thought that most of the scouts from the swarm were flying over the fence rather than to the bait hives.  I had been hoping to video the swarm taking off and then landing on the bait hive but in the end my nerve failed and I put them in a nuc.  Here they are with three frames of foundation added.

When I was cutting them out of the blackcurrant bush one chunk of the swarm fell but it landed on a rhubarb leaf so it was easy to pick them up and move them to the hive.  They immediately started walking in so I was confident the queen was inside.

While I was watching the swarm I could see several bees carrying pollen - obviously returning foragers caught up in the excitement - but no drones.  Once almost all the bees were in the nuc I did see a few drones amongst the small number of bees left in the bush.

Here are the bees fanning around the entrance, encouraging the stragglers to go in.

Tonight I have moved the nuc onto a stand, only a couple of metres from where they started.  I put on a feeder and I expect them to build up quickly.  In a few days I'll have a look in and see if I recognise the queen.