I was removing a feral beehive recently. It's been there only for a few months, but has became rather large during that time. I cut out all the comb, and put the brood in my super attached to rubber bands. I didn't give it enough time, I'm coming to realise that with bee removal jobs, I need to complete it before night, as otherwise the bees aren't that mobile and instead of walking into the super like I want them to do, they just cluster up wherever they land. I even experimented with putting probably too much lemon grass oil, they responded to it but didn't move into the hive like I wanted.
So I left, and returned the following evening. There was a fair amount of activity happening in the super, decent amount of bees in it. However, the majority of the hive ended up flying and clustering in a tree just 15 or so meters away. Could it be possible that there was two queens, that one queen stayed with the super and the other flew into the tree?
I'm not sure why they decided to swarm. The super may not have been quite big enough for them but they still would have had a fair amount of space available. Is lemongrass oil not that effective in enticing swarms to move into a super? Is them flying off into the tree, an indication that they may have genetics that induces them to abscond and not stick in a hive?