# small fall swarm



## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

This has been the year for swarming. Especially late swarms. From my observation anyway.


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## BjornBee (Feb 7, 2003)

I had a good number, just not big ones.

The following picture is from this morning. I will not open it, but it seems many are on the outside of the nuc box. It's a three frame medium, but the swarm was small, so it's not overcrowding or heat. Maybe they just settled there for the night. I guess I'll find out later if they stay.

I also thought about what I had done yesterday morning that actually could of provoked this. I had pulled a bunch of queens for orders and after waiting a few hours, combined a bunch of three frame medium mating nucs into ten framers. Several of the nucs combined had no queen, or so I thought. I'm thinking now, that maybe I combined a couple nucs together and had more than one queen per box. I also combined a few on top of other nucs with the newspaper combine method.

And so maybe a queen and her bees absconded, and this was why the queen flew and landed on the grass. She was not prepared top leave on short notice was not slimmed down to fly???

anyways, here they are this morning.


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## Eaglerock (Jul 8, 2008)

Very Very beautiful, nice pictures.... clear as in real life.

I can even see the dimples in their cheeks.

Looks like you had re-queened them as they have two different color bands.


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## BjornBee (Feb 7, 2003)

Eaglerock said:


> Looks like you had re-queened them as they have two different color bands.


Thank you.

Yes, they are from a nuc yard (re-queening ) although I do little mating from this location, but I'm sure there is some mix. 

When a swarm is issued, bees from other colonies are known to get caught up in the swarm. So there may be some mixing from that alone. Drift and other factors could be at play also. There are not many light ones. No doubt from a carni nuc and queen. Which one.....????


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## nursebee (Sep 29, 2003)

Where do you keep the other 522 hives?


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## BjornBee (Feb 7, 2003)

nursebee said:


> Where do you keep the other 522 hives?


On about 30 other farms.


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