My first hive

[belmore honey]

Hi all,

just started in the hobby and 'half' made my first hive....anyhow My bees have built up the brood box with comb packed out and have just started expanding into the honey box but this seems to be taking a while, can someone give me an estimate of how long it should take for the bees to finish building up the first honey box (i hope i got the terms there right) if i just installed them just before Christmas.

regards

Matt

[prestonpaul]

Hi all,

just started in the hobby and 'half' made my first hive....anyhow My bees have built up the brood box with comb packed out and have just started expanding into the honey box but this seems to be taking a while, can someone give me an estimate of how long it should take for the bees to finish building up the first honey box (i hope i got the terms there right) if i just installed them just before Christmas.

regards

Matt

Welcome Matt.
It will depend on what is flowering around you. Producing wax takes a lot of energy and a lot if young bees so if there is not a lot of nectar available the bees won't produce wax both because they don't have the resources available and they don't need it because they have nothing to store. If you want to hurry them along you could feed them sugar syrup. Otherwise they will build out the comb when they are ready.

[merince]

In addition to what prestonpaul already mentioned, you will see an uptick into the wax production once the new brood starts emerging - about a month after the queen started laying.