Last weekend I checked on my hives and found lots of capped brood in a very good pattern.
Today, i went in to give them some syrup to support the growth (I had only given dry sugar to this point).
The pattern was a complete mess. It was as if they were putting nectar and pollen in the cells as soon as the brood emerged. The stuff was just randomly packed in everywhere with a spotty type brood pattern and not much open comb.
Is this normal, or at least expected in a warm spring like this? I did not even think they would be able to find that much nectar this early in my area.
Also i did not see much new comb being built. I thought they would start building comb if they had nectar.
Sounds like they need more room. Are there any eggs present
Jim
Post us some pics of the frames.
You never 'feed to feed'. You will always have problems.
Feed only when the hive is:
1. Very young
2. Almost out of food and no nectar flow is on
Seeing as I am well North of you, I can only imagine that you have a decent flow starting. With your feed (which is probably enticing unwanted pests), they are probably running out of room.
What you are seeing is usually called 'backfilling the brood nest'. It sometimes (definitely not always and not even the majority of the time) means they are days from beginning swarm prep.
'Feeding' is not what you do to healthy bees. Out of 35 hives, I fed two. One was a late cut out and one was a swarm on Nov 19 that must have really been an abscond after hurricane Irene.
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Yes, it seems that you stuck free cells with syrup.
Bees will draw foundations when they have time to do that.
You see see the time when they make new burr between inner cover and frames.
Don't push them. They do their best. They do not need a leader in their job.
Ok i should be able to get back in them tomorrow and take the syrup back out.
As far as swarming, I have not seen and queen cells, just regular brood and drones.
Eggs are really hard for me to see at the hive. I do see larvae. In one of the hives I did see the queen.
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Put an foundation box under the brood box. Bees start to draw them when they like so.
You may put couple of store frames between foundations and then 2 foundations to the sides of upper box. When they get nectar flow from nature, they start comb building. And when they get enough new bees to occupye foundations.
Thanks Finski but not possible. Htbh
OK I took a quick look today. It is amazing how quickly bees can adjust and change things. I didn't have time for pics.
They were finally building new comb. I saw the queen in one hive and eggs laid in new comb in the other. Still no sign of swarm cells.
I took the syrup away and put the bars with partial new comb into what I considered the middle of the brood nest to give the queen some space to lay. I also moved the follower board back to give them more bars to work with.
Hopefully this keeps them happy, I won't be back in the hives for at least 10 days.