This colony swarmed in about two weeks ago. I didn't get the queen but feel she may have been injured during the removal process and moved over and under the ceiling joist to the left of where they had built the combs.
I say this by how the bees showed great interest in this area. I waited hrs for her to come back out and group with the bees but she never did. I even put two broodcomb sections in deep frames adjacent to the area to orient the majority of the bees to, in hopes she would join them.
After roughly 3 hrs of very few bees showing interest where I deemed the queen to be I set a queen catcher on top the sheetrock ceiling and the bees flocked to it like Bud on a plate of fried chitlins!
Of course I have housed many different queens in this catcher before, and the bees were picking up that scent.
I eventually placed the catcher inside my medium set up with the 10 frames I had secured from the colony and 99% of the bees went into the medium, believing there was a queen inside of the catcher, marching in just like with the hightech box trick. I'd rather be lucky than good any day.
Btw, I checked the box carefully 3 different times and never found the queen nor any heavy numbers on any particular frame.
It was the queen catcher's scent that oriented the bees to the box set up, for certain. Oh well, I will check to see if they make a queen and requeen if they don't.
And very nice bees, btw. Oh, one more thing, if it were not for me removing the bees, the people would not have known they had a Formosan termite infestation. They will be in touch with their termite company very soon.
Pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/pyxicephalus/April262008...JP