Lots of syrup in cells, very little brood, advice?

[Aerindel]

Two out of my four new hives seem to have a lot more cells filled with pollen and syrup, some even capped, than they do brood. They all have some brood but on some of my hives it seems to bee just small areas a few inches across in a frame that is otherwise packed with open syrup cells.

Most of my hives have about five medium frames filled at this point except for one which has eight partially filled frames (I added another medium to that one today)

What I want to know is if this the bees are drawing comb and filling it from the feeder faster than the queen can get to the cells or if the bees are just being conservative and trying to store ample food before they increase their numbers.

If I stopped feeding would the bees start clearing out syrup cells and lay more brood or just be hungry?

[Oldtimer]

Water it down more so it's still stimulating them but not clogging up the hive. Also if there's a lot of pollen it could be that they are also collecting nectar and your feeding is just adding to it they are jamming out the queen with stores. To test this you can stop feeding completely and see how they go. Also, move the frames apart in the middle and put an empty frame of foundation slap in the middle of the brood nest, to create more room for the queen to lay.

[indypartridge]

Were these new colonies started from packages? Because package bees go through a declining population for 3-4 weeks before you have "new" bees, they are limited in the amount of brood they can raise. Once you have new worker bees emerging, the population starts to rebound, and that's when you'll often see the broodnest expand rapidly.

[mrobinson]

A package starts with nothing. For about the first month it has no brood "coming on line" to replace declining numbers. The colony works to build comb, to find and lay up stores, and to start the first (and ever-continuing) group of brood. It's unpredictable exactly how they will set about doing that. By and large, once you've established that they appear to be under way, probably the best thing to do is to .. let them bee.

If you "helpfully" keep feeding them sugar water, well, they might put this away because it is there, but if the flowers are out and the weather is warm they probably by now have utterly no need for your well-meaning interventions. They will go out to nature and gather from her what is there -- nectar and pollen. They will build comb with astonishing speed. They might do something with your sugar water, or they might haul it away and dump it because it is a potential source of damaging mold, fermentation and bacteria. Especially in warm weather. I'd say that if you see them putting up food, they don't need more from you.

Watch their comings and goings. (It's a wonderful place to sit in the shade with a nice book.) But, basically, otherwise leave them alone for a month.

[Aerindel]

Thanks for the advice all. I have a few more days worth of syrup mixed up already so I think I'll feed them that until its gone and see how they do on their own. This is day eleven for the packages. Weather is great right now and the dandelions are in full swing. Some of my hives have what feels like ten pounds of syrup comb so I think they should be good for awhile. Last year I fed my packages for a lot longer but that was in deep equipment with foundation while this year I'm foundationless in mediums.

Its really interesting how the hives are going about business. Two of them seem to hording food while the other two seem to be going for maximum brood but they all have some of everything.