Lots of brood, no honey

What a beautiful day to be a beekeeper! High 70's, sunny with nice cloud breaks and no wind. Simply gorgeous!

It's been 3 weeks since we opened Hive 1 and 2 weeks since we opened Hive 2. Man, are there a lot of bees in there (pic 1)! Both hives have lots of capped brood but less than 1/2 frame of honey or pollen between them. Three weeks ago I took the top feeder off Hive 1, 2 weeks ago for Hive 2. Seems the queens have been busy laying eggs and the bees are doing a great job raising them but the field bees don't seem to be putting any stores away.

Off to Beesource.com; asking if this is
normal and should I put the feeders back on. Five minutes and I had an answer! What an incredible resource. Yes, put the feeders on as there aren't enough stores to feed the bees if there's a dearth but not to worry as at this point you want lots of brood, not honey. Soooooo, tomorrow on go the feeders.

I examined every frame today as a fellow new beek and email buddy, Keith, has a queen cell in one of his hives (pic 2 courtesy of Keith). We both bought our packages from BetterBee and installed them on the same day. Odd to already have a queen cell so I really wanted to check to see if I had the same. No problem, just LOTS of burr comb and many more bees.
In fact, almost all of our bees are now New Hampshire natives. Of course, unless your relatives came over on the Mayflower and immediately settled here, you'll never be a NH native!

Hive Notes
Hive 1: The bees did not draw out the outer 2 frames on either side of the lower deep but moved straight up to the 2nd deep I put on 3 weeks ago where they've drawn 3 1/2 frames. As mentioned, there are a LOT of bees in this hive! It was a bit unnerving when I looked in and knew I was going to pick up each frame. To help start getting the bees to draw out more frames, I moved 2 of the outer frames toward the center. Still haven't seen the queen but she's doing a great job (pic 1 and 3)!

Hive 2 now has drawn 6 frames with lots of capped brood, larvae and some eggs. Didn't see the queen today but the number of bees in this hive has increased dramatically (pic 4). As I will be unable to open them for a couple of weeks, I added a 2nd deep after spraying the frames with 1:1 syrup with Honey-B-Healthy added to the syrup. Didn't see the queen today.

For mite control, I sugared all of the bees. The ladies were very relaxed and let us work them without a problem. One of the girls stung me on the forefinger after I accidentally pinched her. Ten minutes after leaving the apiary they were out and about like we were never there.

Drifting, anyone?

I've been wondering why Hive 1 is so far ahead of Hive 2. The beeks at beesource.com (a must website for any aspiring beekeeper) have addressed this a couple of times and I believe Hive 2 may be a victim of drifting. Drifting is when you install 2 or more packages at the same time and the bees from one hive move into the other hive before everyone gets settled. This makes great sense to me as Hive 2 has been behind from the beginning.

Hive Notes:
I've left Hive 1 alone for the past 2 weeks and plan to visit it next week. I did open Hive 2 last weekend and found most of 4 frames built out (1st picture). I took the top feeder off and installed an inner cover. I opted to leave the hives alone this week, tho' I did raise the rear of the telescoping top on each hive to help with circulation.

Really looking forward to getting into the hives next weekend to see if I can add a super.

On a personal note, we lost our beautiful German Shepherd, Luke, to cancer last week. Very few things have brought us the joy this phenomenal dog did. We'll cherish our memories of him forever.

What a Mess!

Another lesson learned. I should not have placed a spacer between the hive top feeder and the hive box. I did it to make room for the pollen patty I put on top of the frames in each hive when I installed the packages. Guess what...bees don't like empty space and fill it with comb (look under feeder in 1st pic). What a waste of the bees' time and what a major mess it made when I opened the hives today. They had drawn out a large area of comb and had been storing honey in it. Gayla scraped it off as I held the feeder and our friend Stephon took the pictures. We ended up scraping it onto the top of the frames, Mistake 1 as it coated numerous bees and trapped them in the honey. Mistake 2 was not leaving it in the hive box for them to clean up. We took it thinking we'd melt the wax. We were amazed at how much honey was in it. Very light in color and taste. I thought it might be from the syrup but I haven't seen bees drinking it this week. Both hives built the comb on the bottom of the feeders. Don't know...

Hive Notes:
Both hives are building comb corner to corner on the plastic frames.

Hive One has built out 4+ frames on the black Piercos (Pic 2). There are all stages of bee larvae (Pic 3, nice shot Stephon!) and many capped cells. There seems to be 2x the number of bees in Hive One when compared to Hive 2. No comb was drawn on the drone frame or any of the 4 outer most frames. I rotated one of the outer frames into the center. I left the last 1/3 of the pollen patty in the hive, did a sugar treatment, removed the hive top feeder and placed a 2nd hive body on top with an inner cover and the telescoping top. I want to leave them alone for 2 weeks and thought it best to add the 2nd hive body. We still haven't seen the queen, though it is obvious she's quite busy.

Hive Two still has a hive top feeder on it though I did remove the pollen patty and spacer. They didn't seem too interested in the patty. There are 3 frames well drawn out on the white small cell Mann Lake 100s, lots of various stages of larvae, the queen was easy to identify. Overall, there is less action in this hive. The comb attached to the feeder was much larger in this hive compared to Hive One. Nothing was on any of the outer 6 frames. Tho' there is not a spacer, I may open this one next week to see if they are still trying to build on the feeder.