Act of desperation!

[David McLeod]

Well I had another abscond swarm. This one is a cutout colony that has been rehived for right at a month. It looked for all the world like they were put up for good with some new drawn and eggs. I had marked the queen and checked only enough to verify eggs and left them alone other than to feed via boardman. Then I screwed up. As they were in a shallow since that is what I put my floor joist cut outs into I thought adding a medium of drawn would be better than a deep of foundation and I dropped a medium of wet drawn (freshly extracted) comb on top. Feed and add a box all in one right? The ants thought so as well and this afternoon they bailed on me right into the neighbor's crepe myrtle.
They burrowed up right into a nasty crotch, anyone from the south who knows how crepe myrtles are cut back each year knows exactly the crotch I speak of. I tried shaking and shaking and shaking but no way was I going to get her highness shook free of that mess. After shaking and digging around looking for my marked queen I gave up and hit on an act of desperation.
I robbed another box of a frame of open brood shook a double handful onto it and put it into the box. I then took my blower motor and blew every last bee out of that crotch and put them all into the air. Crossed my fingers and hoped they settled in a better spot. I got lucky and they settled in an azaela about six inches above the open box. One good shake and there she was on ther top bars and before she slipped down between the frames it was clear she was unmarked. I guess I got a new queen, I just hope she's mated as she ain't getting out unless she squeezes through the excluder.

[kathyp]

maybe they cleaned the mark off. 

[David McLeod]

Maybe but this one looked more like the brown bombers I have in most of mine the queen my faulty memory remembers was almost black. But then again I do try for as small a dot as I can and if they really wanted to it ought to be fairly easy to do away with.

[Intheswamp]

I'm glad you got'em back...new queen or old you've got a viable colony even if the genetics may be different from where yous started.  Nice work and I do know what you mean about those blasted cm crotches... cutting crape myrtles back like that really messes up their natural growth pattern, they look better left tall.

Ed