Martin called the other day to say his bees have swarmed. By the time I got there, a cluster the size of a sack of potatoes had reduced to little more than a handful. Bad weather had possibly made them change their mind about swarming and this hard core of bees were still protecting the queen. Or that's what we thought. We dropped these stragglers into a box, but there was no sign of her majesty. We shook the last of them out of the box near the hive, not much else we could do.