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.