# How long until swarm has good laying pattern?



## MelanieWoosley (Nov 11, 2012)

Hi all. A swarm moved into one of my swarm traps on May 19. I waited until last week to transfer it out of the trap. (trap is an 8 frame deep) It seemed to be pretty full. At the time I was transferring the frames from the trap to the 10 frame deep, I noticed brood of all stages. Did not see the queen but saw eggs, larvae and capped brood. My concern was that the brood pattern was spotty. I wondered, after swarming does it take time to get a solid pattern going or should the queen be laying a solid pattern now? It has been four weeks. Thanks in advance!


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

It depends on weather it is a primary swarm, or an after swarm, which has a virgin queen. the primary swarm should fall into pattern right away. an after swarm should take the same amount of time as any virgin queen.


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## Sharpbees (Jun 26, 2012)

Melanie, Since this is a swarm the old queen generally goes with the swarm and many times she is coming to the end of her best laying. This would account for the spotty laying pattern. Generally the bees will supersede her after a round or two of brood. Once a new queen has been made the pattern should look better. Also if this turned out to be an after swarm the queen may have been a virgin when they swarmed and sometimes a newly mated queen takes a little time to "get it right". Hope this helps.


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## MelanieWoosley (Nov 11, 2012)

Thank you all! My assumption was that this was an after swarm, simply because of the small size of the swarm. I could be totally wrong!


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## DLMKA (Feb 7, 2012)

I have a swarm caught on Memorial Day from one of my hives that as of a week ago hadn't got it quite figured out but the workers left a nice area for her to get to work. Nice honey and pollen band over a completely empty broodnest. Really amazing to see to be honest.


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## mtndewluvr (Oct 28, 2012)

Probably beating a dead horse here, but if the queen was a virgin, your capped brood should be fairly light in color (young brood), and yes...probably spotty while she ramps up. 

If she was an older queen, she should have some darker capped brood with some emerging young which could possibly be causing the spotty looking pattern.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

What does the age of the queen have to do with the color of the capping over the brood? I haven't heard about that before. I thought the color of the capping is just based on how long the brood had been capped.


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## mtndewluvr (Oct 28, 2012)

shannonswyatt said:


> What does the age of the queen have to do with the color of the capping over the brood? I haven't heard about that before. I thought the color of the capping is just based on how long the brood had been capped.


If the queen was a laying queen right from the start, she would have older brood (thus, darker colored brood) than a virgin queen would have...it would take a virgin queen 3-4 weeks (depending on when she got mated) to start laying, so all of her capped brood (assuming she had any by 3-4 weeks) would be lighter in color by the time you got your first look in there. Hope that makes more sense.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

Gotcha. I was reading the post as saying virgin queens would have light cappings and older queens would have dark capings, based on the queen and not the length of time the brood had been capped.


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