>Does anyone understand how this works? If you pinch a queen and put her in alcohol, this works as a lure to attract swarms.
I never pinch them. I just drop her in the alcohol. A swarm doesn't know one queen from another. It is attracted to QMP.
> But if instead of pinching her, you put that same queen into an existing hive, the bees would probably kill her.
Actually, they might, but probably is stretching it. If you put her at the entrance they will.
>It's pretty clear that bees can tell one queen from another since they kill intruders and protect their own queen.
There is a school of thought, led by none other than Brother Adam, that they CANNOT tell their queen from another, but they can tell a queen who is currently laying from one that's been in a cage a few days.
> Why then is the pheromone of a foreign queen attractive to a swarm?
Swarms are chaos. They often swarm at the same time as other hives and obviously can't tell which is their cluster by the way the clusters grow and shrink.
>You would think they would be repelled if they thought a space was occupied by a queen not their own.
But they can't tell.
> Do swarms just follow any queen scent they can find?
Yes. They do.