Honey Lock???

[wmcguire]

Ok.... I have just over wintered my first hive, and installed a new package in my second. My first hive came from a feral swarm. Actually, it came from two small swarms from the same tree. I just killed one queen and joined the hives.

My over wintered hive is the one that I have a question about. I wintered it with a deep hive body and a deep super. This spring I noticed that there wasn't much going on in the hive body, and I spotted the queen working in the super. I reversed them. Later, after I saw them working in the super as well as the body, I added a medium super for honey. This was done last week.

I just looked in on them today. They haven't touched the medium honey super, and the deep super has maybe one frame of brood in it. The rest seem to be filled with honey capped and uncapped.

I have seen mentioned before on these forums about being "honey locked". Not entirely certain what that is, but wondered if this was it or if I even had a problem?

[NCSUbeeKEEPER]

Are you saying that the colony only has one frame containing brood and all the other frames are full of honey? If that's the case then just take some of the honey frames out and replace them with either drawn comb or foundation. Without more detail it's hard to assess your exact situation. You could be experiencing back filling in preparation for swarming. Did the colony have a strong spring build up?

[wmcguire]

It appears that only one frame in the deep super has brood and the rest seem to have honey. The hive body is full of brood frames, and the queen has been active in the past few days with a fairly consistent brood pattern. I'm really just concerned that they haven't touched the top medium honey super. They haven't even attempted to build out any of the foundation (all new frames).

[NCSUbeeKEEPER]

This was done last week.

One week is a little too early to be worried in my opinion. Bees tend to work on one area at a time. As the flow continues to progress I would expect them to move up to your medium super. Check again in a couple weeks. I really don't think you have a problem here.

[wmcguire]

Thank you so much.