Swarm!

In the masonry of the school (it's an old Victorian mansion), funnily enough just outside my classroom, we have some wild bees. Every year I have a host of dead bees on the floor of my room (those that came in, but couldn't fly out) and every year they swarm.

The perfect swarm

Of course, this year they decided to swarm the day before the nucs were due to arrive, so on the 5th June (yes, I'm a bit behind, but hope to catch up tonight). We saw them circling the air around their nest in the walls and that was it on the Wednesday.
The next day, the swarm was hanging, just like the books say it should, from some young hawthorn saplings, touching the ground. If I had had a spare hive, I would have gone out there and then (though clueless) to collect it. But with the nucs just half an hour away, I couldn't use one of the designated hives.

Quite on the contrary, I saw a bee checking out the empty hives and feared it might be a scout bee and soon I'd have the whole swarm in one of the hives! That didn't happen though - whether luckily or unluckily, I'm still not quite sure.
Patrick, who brought the nucs, did see if he could catch the swarm, but by then it had moved on.