Hello all, i am new to the beekeeping game and am currently taking care of two colonies. they have been doing so well that i added a honey super to each of my hives with a queen excluder over two weeks ago. Just checked them this morning and there are bees all over the frames of the honey super but there is no comb built up-none at all. I know that these bees can build comb FAST as they filled up two deep boxes each in just over a month. So what to do?
I am worried that they will become honey bound as they are packing frame after frame of honey into the deeps-that is why i added the honey supers in the first place.
Should i give them a week and if still no comb remove the queen excluders?
Can i remove the queen excluders until the frames are built up and then replace them?
They will build comb if they want. You might want to remove the queen excluder to insure the queen has enough room. I dont use one at all. Rather have an extra board of brood in my super than a swarm. It might aid them in getting to work in the new super. Aso, spray foundation(if its plastic) w/ sugar water and honey-b-healthy.
if they are up there, they will fill it when they have stuff to fill it.....however, there is nothing wrong with taking off the excluder and seeing what happens. it might speed things up. later you can decide whether you want to put it back, or not.
Yes, definately get rid of the excluder until they have significant drawn comb. This is when it is called a honey excluder.
Once they are working it and it is part of the hive, then it will work better as a queen excluder and you can put it back, or at that point it will probably be all honey anyway and you won't need. If you have a frame of drawn comb with brood or honey to put in there, that will work even better.
Rick
Removed queen excluders so we'll see. Thanks for the help guys
My bees like to coat every thing with a very thin layer of propolis. When I checked my second box there were plenty of bees in it but nothing appeared to be happening until I tried to move a frame.
If you're worried about them becoming honey bound, you could pull some of the deep honey frames and replace them with frames with starter strips or foundation, and either harvest the honey from those frames or freeze it to put back in after thawing it in the fall to increase their winter stores.
Bberry, like Moonshae suggested you could remove some of the capped honey from your deeps and make some room. Just be sure they have enough honey to winter on. I don't use excluders, don't like them, just my 2cents.
I was having the same problem so I removed the excluders and wiped the foundation down with sugar syrup. They were all over it the next evening when I checked on them.