Hi all,
I'm quite new to beekeeping having had bees for 12 months now. Yesterday I noticed that I had a swarm leave and locate themselves under my kids trampoline. Adjacent to this swarm only 3 mts away located on a rock was a second swarm. They were roughly the same size.
I captured the swarm hanging under the trampoline as it was straight forward. Then I decided to capture the adjacent swarm and add it to the swarm from the trampoline.
Have I stuffed up here by adding them together? and should I have kept them separate? My initial thoughts were that it was the same swarm given they were so close, but just in two clusters so I thought adding them together wouldn't be a drama but then later I thought that what if they were actually 2 separate swarms with their own queens.
I have captured them in an ideal box with 4 new frames with foundation pushed over to each side. I have this box lined on the bottom with 2 layers of newspaper. I plan to put this box onto the top of the weaker of my two hives (in my backyard). I'm assuming that this means the 2 queens would then fight it out.
Perhaps I should have kept these 2 swarms separate and added them back to each of my 2 hives.
Any advise or information about this scenario would be greatly appreciated.
Dale