Artificial swarm and returning foragers

[Mellifera Crofter]

I had to do an artificial swarm today on a small colony. I think they were trying to supersede the queen, but I like her and want her to stay around a bit longer. Because of a lack of hives, and because it was a small colony to start with, I put the queen mother in a nucleus (brown plywood) on the old spot, and kept the brood in the original box (a blue Swienty) next to the queen mother with the entrance facing a new direction.

Normal wisdom is that the foragers will return to the queen mother on the old spot - but as her hive now looks so different, wouldn't that confuse them? There was an awful lot of bees on the side of the blue Swienty looking for an entrance rather than flying to the mother's new plywood box. I suspect they're more likely to find the Swienty's entrance than the entrance to the nucleus with the old queen.

Do any of you also worry about the boxes' appearances after an artificial swarm and whether that may confuse the bees, or am I worried about nothing?

Kitta

[Mellifera Crofter]

I think I'll answer my own question: I think appearance matters. Even now at 8.45pm bees with pollen are returning home and find their way into the Swienty (the box they know) and not into the old queen's new box on the old site. I'll have to sort something out tomorrow or the old queen will end up without much help in her hive.
Kitta

[gavin]

Yeah, they're not so daft ;). Hide the old colony at the back out of the way and you may get more going to the new box. Once you have a decent number blasting out Nasanov fragrance at the entrance they'll call lots in.

Quite often now I move the old queen into a different box with enough bees to look after things, and stores, then lock them in a few days. The rest of the bees can be left alone on the original site with super(s) until before the first queen hatches (need to leave only open cells, or guess their age). Then the queen cell complement should be complete and you can leave only one ripe cell (or one in each split if you do that). If I'm keen to build up the old queen's unit putting her box on the old site at that time helps, but the last colony I did that with promptly went back to making queen cells.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks Gavin. I've sorted them this morning. The queen is back in the box they all know and I've moved the brood to a nucleus - so it's not a proper artificial swarm because I've now had to leave some brood frames in the queen's box. She's old - a 2011 queen with tattered wings. They probably would have tried to supersede her again even if I've done a proper artificial swarm. I'll carefully watch her hive.
Kitta