Trapout caught queen.

[BeeMaster2]

I did 2 Trapouts this year and in both of them I ended up having the trapped out queen move into the hive. The first one was in a commercial building in the cinder blocks and I used a plastic bee escape as the trap. This job was an hour away from my house.  I put a frame of brood and bees in the Nuc. I checked on them a week later and the bees were getting back in the hive and the bees in the box moved out. There were very few bees coming and going from the building. I pretty much gave up on getting any bees from this job and just worked on getting the bees to move out. Around the 30 day point I checked on them and the Nuc box was busy with bees. I brought them home and I had lots of comb built and lots of wet brood. The queen moved into this box instead of heading for the hills as I was expecting.
Yesterday I took down another Trapout. The bees were in a tree about 12? up and I used a traditional cone as the Trapout. On this one the bees from the frame in the nuc remained active and I waited an extra week after the quit coming out of the tree to give the new queen time to get mated.
I opened it today and found not only 5 frames drawn but another 4 frames below the medium frames that were perfectly drawn out to make it real ease to cut and put in a medium frame. Also to my surprise I found almost every frame full of beautifully capped brood. I was not expecting that at all. This queen also moved into the nuc.
Jim

[Dustymunky]

Awesome!  You are the bee whisperer!

[iddee]

Congrats. It does happen, but mostly on new swarms. Once established, she usually stays in the nest until they have raised a new queen. If stores are low she may leave sooner and enter the trap/

[BeeMaster2]

Iddee,
I know with the tree Trapout it was a new swarm. The owner contacted me within a week. He knew when they moved in because he saw them ad he and the neighbors dog were stung. Most of the time I was handling them they were nice. My wife was stung this morning while we were putting them in the medium and they made me abandon my riding mower a little while ago. Had to wear my bee suit to finish cutting the area in front of the hives. I will bee re queening it soon.
Jim