Swarm in new hive question

This swarm flew into a deadout in my yard. There was 5 or 6 bars of comb. I had been using it as my comb bank. I'm glad they landed there, but I was using the comb in my swarm traps. When they first starting drawing out comb they did a pretty good job, but when they got further back they started pulling some of it crossed and I've been fixing it each week. A few weeks ago and I counted 18 bars with brood in them. Only wall to wall in the middle, but a ton of brood.

I feed very little, and I haven't feed those bees at all. They arrived at the beginning of a good flow and have just kept rolling. I've feed some package bees in the past, but swarms come ready to make comb. On of the reason that swarms are docile is that they are full of honey. The problem I have with feeding is robbing. If I could feed and not cause robbing I probably would though, particularly if I could do it when we hit our dearth in July. The advantage of not feeding is that I know all of the honey is honey and not sugar honey. Unless they are robbing someone else's feeders. Last year I had a hive that had red honey (hummingbird feeder!)

shannonswyatt said:

Could it have been bringing it in but not in volume? If this was a new hive with no comb maybe there was no room for pollen?

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I have very little experience... this is our first year. But when we looked Sunday there was zero pollen in the drawn comb. And no eggs. No pollen observed going into the hive between Wednesday and Sunday, but obviously we are only watching for a brief time.

I have yet to have a hive build comb (except for queen cells) without a queen and have yet to have a hive haul pollen without eggs being laid. The queenless hives and swarm I've dealt with have just spit little globs of wax all over the place, but with no structure to them. I added a bar of brood to anchor the swarm and when I opened it up a few days later they had started several queen cells, spit globs of wax all over, and started haulling pollen. The day after we introduced the mated queen they had started comb on two bars.

They will haul pollen as long as their is brood in any stage (it seems), and they will build comb as long as there is a queen.

The first package we installed sat and did nothing until they got their first queen. Then they drew comb quickly and she began laying and bees began bringing in pollen. Then they went queenless again. Comb building completely stopped, but they have continued to haul pollen as long as their was brood in the hive. I also put a mated queen in this same hive after feeding it eggs and emerging brood to keep it going. I did this on a Thursday evening. Guess what they'd done on Friday evening when I went to check on the queen cage (through observation window)? They'd build another good chunk of comb.

I'm not saying it's a hard and fast rule, but I'd put significant money on their now being eggs in the comb of the hive that we noticed was now hauling pollen yesterday.

Went out at lunch and did a full inspection and am mostly pleased with the results. :applause: They are building on bar 14, about 1/3 of the bar is full. Bar 1 & 2 where they began building in the upper corner it looks like the queen is already back filling empty cells I saw grubs in cells with dark walls. This answers my original question, they don't need much comb to get started. Bar 1 is built against the hive wall so it is not moveable at all, I will probably wait till spring to deal with it. Bar 2 had a bit of connecting comb with bar 1 so I trimmed it off (about 4 square inches) and left it in the hive for them to clean up. They are quite the busy little colony. The last 2 bars are empty cells at this point and all the rest have brood/honey/pollen on them. I did not notice any drone comb, all of the brood is in the core of the comb and the edge cells are empty or are being filled with nectar. I did see one area which might be a supercedure cell, tried to get a picture for a closer look tonight on the computer.