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I don't consider myself a lucky person when it comes to catching swarms as this is the first time a swarm that's not mine moved into one of my swarm traps. I had a 10-frame medium size cardboard box with an old comb in it. Though it is somewhat smaller than the recommended size (also have 2 8-frame medium box setup as well), a fairly large swarm moved in all of a sudden yesterday.

I have been wondering whether there is a way to assess the age of the queen. She is not marked but looked very plum when I transferred them to an 8-frame box with a frame of open brood. I'd prefer to keep young queens as a swarm prevention method (2 hives swarmed regardless and left). Thanks

I don't know of any sure way to assess the age of an unknown queen. If her wings are not tattered or worn and she appears shiny and vigorous, that MIGHT indicate a young queen. I assume any decent sized swarm (approximately 3lbs or more) is a primary swarm with an older queen. When marking queens, I ASSUME a swarm queen is older and mark her with last season's color (blue this season) and only mark swarm queens with this year's color (white) if I know that the swarm is an after swarm (meaning a swarm from one of my hives after I know it has previously swarmed) with a queen made after the departure of the old queen and primary swarm. I have found that a significant number of swarm queens get replaced during the season.

Some folks will replace a swarm queen with a young, mated queen so they know for sure. If you want to play with things, you can wait until your swarm queen is laying well. At that point, you can move her to a nuc and let the swarm attempt to re-queen. If they do, you have a young queen with the swarm's genetics. You can then either pinch the old queen and newspaper combine her bees back into the original or you can let both hives continue and see what happens.

Probably not a good answer to your question, but the best educated guess I can make.

It makes perfect sense. Thanks for the sound suggestion in marking her with the last year's color. Since the swarm was a decent 3-lb size, it'd be safe to mark her with blue. I plan to use the colony to get as much comb as drawn possible but have no plans to graft from that queen because of the very reason you noted.

Thank you for your sage advice. Check this site every morning .