Nectar in cleaned-up hive

[Tug Fork Bob]

About a month ago I captured a swarm & got inspired to make a "comeback".  (40 years ago I had kept bees and still had equipment)

Anyway, I cleaned up the rest of my deep hive bodies and set one with drawn comb out to see if I could interest any additional swarms.  There were a couple of frames of partially filled pollen and some sugared honey so when I started seeing bees around it I assumed they were robbers and thought-- "good, now it will be cleaned up better and I can get rid of the rest of the old drawn comb".

There has been a lot of activity around the hive for the last 3 days, so last night at dusk I lifted the top cover to peek inside--there were lots of bees on top of 4 or 5 frames and packed in between besides.  So this morning, I looked deeper--The bees had cleaned up the drawn combs and had started packing the combs with nectar!!

What is going on here?  I looked at both sides of all ten frames-there were no eggs, no "white" wax anywhere, approx 2 frames (total) nectar, and no queen visible.  The bees are quite mellow--didn't get excited at all by my poking around and just stayed on the combs and hummed contentedly.

Thanks for any input--this is a great site!

Bob

[Robo]

Perhaps a secondary swarm with a virgin queen.

[AdmiralD]

My inexperience says to wait a couple of weeks and then look for the queen...My guess is that there is gonna be some nice capped cells and maybe a bee or two poking thier heads out of a capped cell....

My guess is that you got a nice swarm...without even trying and they like your hive....

Congratulations...You are now the proud owner of some feral bees...