I had an interesting situation happen yesterday. All seemed to be going well with this new hive. Checked on them in the morning before work and all the bees appeared to be doing their usual thing. Also still working on freeing the queen from her cage. I leave and when I come back in the evening I notice thier are considerably less bees active. Afraid they may have swarmed I look in the hive and the queen is still in the cage with about 1/4 as many bees as before. No more dead bees than usual either. Also the frame of honey I put in was empty, gone. I noticed that the bees coming and going were headed in the direction of the mother hive.
I believe that the hive was robbed but is it possible that the bees in the new hive started to return back to the old hive after a couple of days? Maybe following their old brothers? I wasn't sure what to do so I've let it go for a couple of days. I checked to tonight, same amount of bees, queen almost free. Still not sure what to do I grabbed a few hundred bees from the good hive and threw them in an empty super as a newspaper combine. For the night I blocked the entrance so they couldn't go right home before dusk. I don't really have any place far to move the hive right now, not more than 100' maybe. Think moving and/or turning it would help?