# 2 weeks, huh?



## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

Looks right for two weeks. Swarms are comb building machines, Aren't they!


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## crmauch (Mar 3, 2016)

Beebeard said:


> Had the classic "They just showed up 2 weeks ago" yesterday. 2 deeps and 50 lb of honeycomb later....


Obviously not two weeks, but none of the comb looked particularly dark. How old would you estimate this nest to be?


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

crmauch said:


> Obviously not two weeks, but none of the comb looked particularly dark. How old would you estimate this nest to be?


 I don't know about that. I placed a captured swarm in a 10 frame hive with foundationless frames and 1 drawn frame as a guide. They filled the 9 frames in two weeks. Not once but several times this has happened. The most recent was two weeks ago. I just added a second!


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## Beebeard (Apr 27, 2016)

I had a swarm build a deep so fast I had to put a second on 2 weeks later, but that comb was white and soft as could be. Hard to tell in the pics, but the entrance hole is dark and shiny from extended bee traffic. I'd say it was a swarm that moved in last year, overwintered well but didn't swarm this spring, and has been booming since. The comb was not very dark., but the brood portions were like cardboard. much of the comb in the pictures has been added to recently by the bees, mostly for honey stores. We are on the tail end of a good spring flow. There were 2 small Queen cups but they were empty. We did find the queen and she looks good. They still had a decent amount of room to expand in there.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

It's plausible. That comb doesn't look very old, and if the swarm was big, its amazing how much they can build and put away. The two weeks might not be so far off.

Adam


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## Mr.Beeman (May 19, 2012)

I vacuumed a swarm that was about 45k bees. three weeks later they filled 4 ten frame mediums. They were placed originally on 3 mediums with drawn comb. The fourth (with drawn comb) was added a week after hiving. I checked them after a month of hiving.... all full of brood, nectar and a whole medium of capped honey.... it's plausable.


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## Beebeard (Apr 27, 2016)

I will certainly defer to those with more experience and concede it is likely a very new hive. I do believe they had been through at least one full brood cycle though. If you look at the mid removal picture, you can see the darker brood comb on the left and fresh honey on the far right. between the two is a darker area that looks like it has been used for brood (drones, maybe?) and is now back filled with honey. Our main swarm season is last 2 weeks of april through end of may, so while 2 weeks may be pushing it, a month is quite plausible, IMHO. Still gaining experience!


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