Full super

June 7th, 2015

I went into the hives to especially see how the new one (Hive 2) was doing because I was concerned about the activity.  I'm still trying to figure it out.

Remember that I bought a package of bees rather than a Nuc.  I think it was my first package and perhaps that is my confusion.  Growth seems to be very slow.

I have two deeps on the hive, and added a super as well, but the real activity is still in the lowest deep where, when I finally got to it, had a small number of larvae which told me the queen must still be there.  However there was also a lot of uncapped honey and very little pollen.

I know there's a lot of pollen outside because Hive 1 is brimming with pollen and honey and I watch the bees going into the hive loaded with pollen.  Yet in Hive 2, I see a loaded bee come in but not nearly as often.  Is that because I just don't have that many bees yet?  Or something else?

In Hive 2, bees also had to make honeycomb since I didn't have enough frames with comb, so I think that might have held them up a little.  Are they trying to build comb instead of foraging for pollen?

I was happy to see some larvae in the lower deep, but I'm still a little concerned about this hive.  I'll keep watching.

Perhaps my queen is on her way out?

Hive 1 is a totally different story!

When I opened up this hive to see how things were going, I saw that the first super was totally full of honey.  I really could have pulled off the entire super and extracted honey!  So early!  But I wasn't prepared to do it that day so instead, I added on another empty super and let them go to work on that. However, I'll need to set aside a day soon and extract the honey from the first super.

I didn't look into the two deeps because I couldn't lift the super.  I'll need to empty it of most of the honey in order to see anything below.  It's just too heavy and I'm afraid I'd drop it.  That wouldn't be a pretty picture. Ouch.