Will a queenless swarm nasonav?

[Old Blue]

Last night I hived what I thought was a swarm.  It was on the side of a house and was pretty easy access.  As I peeled the swarm off the house and placed them on the top bars of my box, I noticed some of the bees were moving to the bottom of the lap boards on the outside of the house.  I made a couple of sweepings off of that spot onto my  dust pan and put them in the box.  The bees in the box got on top of the top bars and were nasonaving and the the airborn were landing on the box.  About 90-95% of the bees went into the box.

Afterwards talking to the resident, I found out that he had used a shop vac earlier in the week to remove bees from the exterior and that they had just last night swarmed up on the outside.  He also told me that there were bees inside the wall and had killed about 20 or so coming from the interior window sill area.

My question is this.
Will the bees nasonav and behave like a swarm if there is no queen present?
If so is there any good way to tell if I have a queen in this ?swarm??

If there is no queen present, I will likely just dump them into another swarm that I hived the day before these, or I suppose I could do a newspaper combine.
What do you think?

Old Blue

[iddee]

If they are still there Sunday, you most likely have a queen. If queenless, they will usually find a home in the area. You should have eggs by Sunday or Monday.

[Old Blue]

I put them in a box of foundationless frames (no comb) with one frame of wax foundation.  I put a robber screen on them and put them on a stand next to one of my older larger colonies with a branch in front of the entrance for orientation.  This has been working fairly well for me.

I just don?t know if I got a queen with these or not.

Old Blue

[richter1978]

Caught a swarm last year and couldn't find the queen.  Waited for about three days and saw no eggs, so I gave them a frame of eggs/open brood.  Two days later I had some nice queen cells. I can't remember if they were nasanoving when I picked them up though.

[BeeMaster2]

Bees use their scent glands to let the rest of the bees know where the hive is. This is not dependent on having a queen in the hive. They do it when they swarm into a new hive before the queen enters. With your situation, your best bet is to give them a frame with some eggs and brood and if possible add a queen.
Jim

[Old Blue]

Thanks everyone for your answers.

I guess I will keep an eye on them.  Usually I will put a frame of brood in with them to keep them from absconding, this seems to work well.  When I get a chance I will do that but I've been to busy these last few days.  My big problem with giving them eggs is that I don't think I can see them.  I also rarely see open brood.  I don't know how they do it but if you figure about a third of the brood at any given time should be open, then why is 99% of it always capped?

Old Blue

[Old Blue]

Thanks sawdstmakr,

That really answers my question.  I don't have any queens available but will do the best I can with a frame of brood.

Old Blue