Where had they come from? Unfortunately it looked as though they were coming from the direction of the national hive in which we housed one of our swarms. We opened the national and it was indeed almost empty with just a few bees remaining, and hardly any stores. It was also a sunnier spot than the others. Maybe it was too hot for them.
The swarm started to settle onto the outside of the newest top bar hive (the current holders of the most beautiful straight comb award):
We carried the deserted national hive (and the table it sat on) over to the other side near the fence where it would get some shade, facing the top bar hive they'd settled on. Then we added a super on top and placed a half-frame of honey from Jenny's hive inside it to entice the bees back in.
They were rather reluctant to march back in of their own accord so we ended up putting the cardboard box directly in the hive, on top of the crown board, with a brood box around them then the roof on top. Here's hoping they like the new location better and decide to stay!
Before the swarm happened, we found and marked the queen in the bait hive (green because she's probably one of last year's queens).
After the drama of recapturing the swarm, we inspected the top bar hives - both the new one next to the lavender box (to admire the beautiful straight comb) and the old one at the back near the fence.
We'd struggled to inspect the latter up till now as there was an area of cross-comb at the far end which we could not look at without tearing through the comb. The other end was rather quiet and empty so we decided to have another go and see what was going on. This time we were able to separate the frames out by careful surgery with a bread knife, and they were doing fine - they were just hidden in the last few frames, so we reduced the size of the hive a bit. We found the queen - she was easy to spot for once: a bright ginger lady!
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