Returning Swarm?

[JMee]

Looking for some advice.
Went down to look at the hives today and found a swarm ( football size) up in one of the trees. Got my gear to get ready to retrieve but swarm took off and went (back?) into one of the hives. - Lots of bees fanning at the hive entrance

This hive had a nucleus taken - queen and couple of frames - on 16th May.
I checked it again on 24th May and thinned out the charged Queen cells to 1
Checked it again 27th May single sealed QC still there.
So expect the queen to emerge round about now ( yesterday/today) and hadn't intended to look again for probably at least another 10 days till she mated and started laying

So the question is- was this a swarm? and should I look inside now or leave be?-

Any advice gratefully recieved

Johnny

[Mellifera Crofter]

I don't think it was a swarm, Johnny - but it might have been a virgin queen on a mating flight, or just a looking-around flight with other bees.

With the colony becoming queenless on the 16th, and the bees using a two-day old larva to create a queen, I think the new queen might have been ready to emerge by the 27th - so, the virgin queen in the capped cell you saw on the 27th might have been getting ready to emerge. Was the tip of the cell nibbled and darker?

Yes, I think leave them alone now for a bit.
Kitta

[JMee]

I don't think it was a swarm, Johnny - but it might have been a virgin queen on a mating flight, or just a looking-around flight with other bees.

With the colony becoming queenless on the 16th, and the bees using a two-day old larva to create a queen, I think the new queen might have been ready to emerge by the 27th - so, the virgin queen in the capped cell you saw on the 27th might have been getting ready to emerge. Was the tip of the cell nibbled and darker?

Yes, I think leave them alone now for a bit.
Kitta

Thanks for the advice - didn't look closely enough at the cell, but also hadn't taken account that larvae would have been 2 days old at start - I'll resist the temptation to look!

[Adam]

I had a 'mating swarm' from a hive a week or two back. Bees clustered in two clumps on a nearby tree; I was all ready to get the step-ladder out as thankfully it was not high up. However I wasn't sure which hive it flew from out of two that I knew to not have a mated queen in. As I was inspecting one of them (with no sealed queencells), the swarm came back. The queen was laying a week or so later.
I am thankful that the colony did swarm out as the other hive I checked had a sealed queencell I wanted, plus some very late emergency queencells which I removed. I would have lost her if I had not been prompted to go in and check.