2 1/2 week inspection

[Steel Tiger]

 I figured 2 1/2 weeks should be long enough for a queen from a package to start laying. Right now my hive is 2 deeps that were checkerboard with fully drawn frames and empty, foundationless frames. There is also a medium with partly drawn comb on all the frames. When I put the medium on, most of the frames had honey. There is also a feeder in the medium.
 Upon opening up, there were just a few bees among the comb and a couple handful of bees working the feeder. All the honey was pulled out of the comb.
The top deep was well packed with bees. I pulled out one of the new frames. It was completely drawn out and a very nice, solid pattern of capped brood on both sides. That was a good enough sign for me to know that the queen was laying and they workers were drawing out the frames.
 I got to the bottom deep and there was no work being down to it. I looked at two of the drawn frames, both were empty of brood and honey. There was no work on the empty frames either.

 I decided to swap out deeps, putting the brood on the bottom and hope they work upwards. I'm going to wait 2 weeks before deciding whether to move frames of brood. By then, new bees should be emerging.

 Dandelions are getting ready to bloom. I'll give them another 1/2 gallon of syrup to see them through until then.

[buzzbee]

Thats a lot of boxes for a package to work in. I would likely have put them in the deep and maybe the medium if it had honey.That many frames and boxes could house a large colony. Why do you want them to have so much space to defend? Or am I missing something?

[Ryan820]

Sounds like they're progressing but I agree on too much space for them. I am brand new and was told to stick to one deep for now and add another when they have eight of the ten frames nearly full. My hive will be two weeks this Saturday and mine had about 1/3 drawn and storing honey and pollen and I found quite a bit of brood. The weather has been bad now though so I'll have to wait to see if they progressed much more.


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[Steel Tiger]

Thats a lot of boxes for a package to work in. I would likely have put them in the deep and maybe the medium if it had honey.That many frames and boxes could house a large colony. Why do you want them to have so much space to defend? Or am I missing something?

All the filled frames had capped honey and no place to store it. Rather than giving them a single deep with no room for the queen to lay, I opted to divide the frames between two deeps.
 I have a deadout sitting next to it consisting of 1 deep and 1 medium which is about 1/2 full of capped honey.
 I'm getting another package of bees coming in next week. Instead of adding a second deep, I'll pull 3 empty frames of comb and 2 undrawn frames from the first hive and replace with frames of honey then put the comb in middle of the second hive to give the queen room to start laying right away.

[Steel Tiger]

 My hope is that by June, the first hive will have both deeps full of brood. If so, I'll be breaking down the hive and making nucs. If the queen keeps going like she is, I'm confident I'll have 14-16 frames of brood by the second week of June. I figure at least 4 nucs (2 frames of brood for each one).  Afterwards, I'll let that hive do what it wants. They're southern bred Italian bees, so I don't have much hope of them living through a northern winter. I'll let them keep their stores and feed in fall if needed. Maybe they'll surprise me and survive.
 After that, I'm hoping the nucs build fast enough to be able to pull a frame of brood out of each once a week to make more nucs. My goal is to have 12 nucs by mid July.

 The only decision I really need to make is which direction to head to pick up carniolan queens for the nucs.
 I can either go south to Full Bloom Apiaries in Connecticut, or north to Michael Palmer in Vermont.