Daughter of Better (or is it Betty?) sets up housekeeping in record time

The swarm we gave Tom Vercoutere is booming. We left it in the xerox box, screen taped over the hole, next to the back fence for him to pick up on the Thursday we captured it. He emailed us a week later:

“Your girls got put in a Nuc box on Friday morning and they had already drawn a 4-inch comb from the lid, just sitting in the box for 15 hours.

So did I get Betty? I checked yesterday and there was already capped brood in the Nuc. She must have started laying the Friday I put her in. If it wasn’t Betty, it sure was a mated queen and not a virgin leaving in an after swarm.

One of my hives has a very spotty brood pattern and a failing queen so I am going to put the swarm bees in that hive after I remove the bad queen.“At left is the comb the swarm built in the lid of the xerox box we used to trap them. The flecks of white on the box are bits of wax, placed, no doubt, in preparation to build more comb. The amber color in the center of the comb is nectar.