Though swarms have been few for me this year, about mid-day I noticed a swarm in progress here at my home yard. It was pleasant observing while wondering, "where are they going to land". They never did. To my surprise they finally flew back to the hive they left from. Hum...
I strolled to their location. They were pretty much all over the front of the hive, and had began settling down and 'marching' in. I opened the top and bees were plenty. Questions went through my mind.
I had someplace to go and time was short so I did not dig in the hive. As I was walking away I noticed a small ball of bees on the ground behind the hive. I knelt down and gently rubbed my finger through the ball. Sure enough! There she was! Thought she was in a ball, she was not being balled but taken care of. A white marked queen! I gently picked her up not wanting her to fly away and went for a queen catch cage. When I placed her in the cage I found the answer to the mystery. She only had one wing!
Not being able to fly away with the swarm, and the swarm realizing they had no queen, they simply came back (home). I had noticed when I opened the hive, to my pleasant sunrise the top box was jam packed full of honey.
As time was limited, here is what I did. I placed a 10 frame box of drawn comb on top. On top of this I placed yet another box of drawn comb, less 1 frame for a total of 19 drawn frames. The reason I did this is I was short on time and had to do something quick. I placed the caged queen on top of the frames of the first added box in the place of the missing 10th frame, of the second added box of 9 drawn frames. My reasoning was, "this may be a way to temporally bank her in her very on home hive." Even if another queen is already hatched and in the brood area I am thinking the honey layer will keep the two separated.
On the other hand, if there are only capped cells in the bottom brood area ready to hatch, the bees 'should not' cut the cells down since they are separated from the old queen on top by the full deep box of honey? (question mark). Is this assumption accurate? For the sake of experimentation, I think I will leave her in this banked condition for a couple days and see just what transpires.... 'Then', I will make a regular split at my convenience with frames of what is necessary to start a new hive with resources for the old queen coming from another hive. I do not want to disturb a newly hatched queen if that is what the situation might be. Your thoughts?
Phillip