Bees in Central virginia

[burleyusa]

I am a first year bee keeper with no training.... or should I say im receiving OTJ beekeeping lessons.

Question:
I put a single super on my 2 hives in the middle to ladder part of April, I opened the hives last week expecting to find some honey and the need to add a second super, instead I found NOTHING. they haven't even started to draw out the comb. i am using wax comb, not plastic cells. A friend came over and examined the hives and he too is stumped, there doesn't appear to be any larva to speak of either. we found the queens back in april but not this time. there was evidence of queen cells and one hive has a good queen cell with larvae in it.

I put entrance feeders back on the hives with a 50/50 sugar water mix and they are going nuts feeding off of them.

suggestions, thoughts?

[coontail]

i am your neighbor and just getting in to it myself. i have an extractor you are welcome to borrow., any time.

[alpha6]

If there is no flow on the bees will not draw out comb. And if there is no flow the queen will stop laying so hence no larve, though I would check again and see if you have a queen because it sounds like they could have swarmed on you. If they are taking syurp that fast then I suspect there is a flow issue. If there is a capped queen cell and you couldn't find a queen I suspect she flew he coup. I wouldn't expect much honey and I would keep the feed on till they build up. I would also inspec the hive without the queen cell for a new queen. If you can't find one then think about combining.

[Ruben]

I'm just to the west you you all in the Shannandoah Valley. If I understand you and you say you have no brood or eggs then you do not have a queen, which would be a good cause for nothing in your super. Take a frame of eggs out of your other hive and put into the queenless hive and they will make a new queen. If both do not have eggs then you need to order two queens ASAP. Were these package bees from this spring or overwintered hives?

[Ruben]

Flow is on here Alpha6, good rain I am adding supers left and right

[burleyusa]

these were over wintered bees. my neighbor who is teaching me found the queens in april.

[boones_bee_nectar]

I would have to think that you have a queen that is either dead, or just no good. If they were mine, and there were no capped brood or eggs, I would suggest requeening them, because even if they have swarmed and waiting on the new queen to start laying, there should still be capped brood. As far as the honey flow goes, it has been there, it's more the weather in the month of April and May. All of mine were slow starting off because of the weather, even with the brood rearing, but things have picked up dramatically here in the past few weeks. As for them taking in the syrup like crazy, I would almost think that could be younger bees that aren't even old enough to be field bees. If there are no new bees coming up, with no queen or eggs being laid, nature tells us that you are going to end up with nothing pretty soon.