did I mess up

[panthercreekbees]

First year with one hive. I was told to put a queen excluder to keep her out of the super. I put one on and a super two weeks ago. Brood chamber was almost full. When opening the top there are not many bees in the super and it looks like I might have had a swarm becouse I believe there are fewer bees, maybe in bottom. They have only pulled aprox. five inch rad of comb on one frame, in two weeks. The super that I was given to use had plastic foundation. The frames in the brood had wax foundation . It really looks like the top brood chamber is full. What might be happening. and is there anything I can do other than wait.

[AstroBee]

It is nearly impossible to get bees to move up through an excluder to bare fundation. You need to either bait them up using an existing frame with honey, or simply remove the excluder until they start drawing wax and storing resources. Once they start working the super you can replace the queen excluder, of course making sure your queen is below. It also help to give them an upper entrance. It could also be that your flow has slowed and the bees don't need comb. If this is the case then there's not much point of having foundation just sitting there. Often when the flow has stopped and there's bare foundation present (I'm talking wax coated plastic) the bees will take any traces of wax off the foundation making it all that much harder to get them to draw it out next time.

[charmd2]

In the last two weeks I've gone from a pretty darn good flow to little to nothing. It's gone from decent amount of rain fall, to NONE.

You aren't that far from me.

When the flow slows down the bees don't draw comb fast. Or at all.

Queen excluders also have a tendancy to be honey excluders. Most on this board will tell you to move a frame of brood up into the super and then put the excluder on. That way the workers are forced into the super. After the brood hatches out they will fill the frame up with honey.

Good luck