[marshmasterpat]

Ok, I have no real mentor here, been reading all I can, and but have a few things I am lost on. But I want to make sure I am going the right way. I now have 6 hives that are all medium frames and been messing with bees for about 8 months. Five of these hives were cut outs and one was a recent swarm.

The three largest hives were all started in 10 frame boxes. These hives now have 3 mediums on them. I have no comb, so I am adding boxes of empty frames and trying to checkerboard the empty frames into the existing brood boxes.

The others are in medium 5 frames nucs. One has struggled as queenless for a long time that finally hatched out a queen cell yesterday. The other two nucs are exploding fast (and are now stacked 2 boxes high). One of these two exploding nucs has filled 5 empty medium frames with comb in less than 10 days and has those 10 frames full of brood. This queen is laying like crazy. The other one was from a swarm that had a virgin queen and she apparently started laying 4 days ago (I saw brood). This hive is full of pollen and honey that was collected at the swarm trap site.

Now of these hives are really filling up fast with comb and the queens are filling them with eggs/brood. But should I be worried that these hives are not stocking up hardly any pollen and not much honey to speak of.

Someone with experience want to share opinions?

Thanks

 

[Slow Drone]

If there's pollen available they'll bring it in.Sometimes they do it in waves.If you can between 1pm and 3pm CST go out and closely observe the hive entrance.You should be able to see them bringing it in more easily.I,m not sure when your nectar flow is you can Google it.Might give them a pint of sugar syrup see if they take it.The queen usually won't lay more brood than they have food,not to common for her to do so.

 

[awebber96]

This time of year, much of the nectar and pollen is going to feed the brood they are building up on. Like Slow Drone said, watch for them bringing in pollen in their pollen sacs. If you don't see them storing much, assume that they are eating it as fast as they are bringing it in right now. Once their numbers are up, they will start storing. Brood rearing consumes a lot of pollen and honey. Also, it sounds as you are giving them lots of frames to draw out, which also consumes food.

You'll note that the one nuc you had that had a virgin queen (read: no brood) stored a bunch of pollen and honey. There was no brood there to eat it.

Also, it sounds like your nucs may be getting crowded (also i dont understand your math--how does a 5-frame medium nuc have 10 frames?). You should either (a) pull frames of brood/honey/pollen to give to other hives that need it and replace with empty frames or (b) get them into a proper hive body and start supering. Don't let those nucs swarm. Give them some more room and you may get a nice honey crop out of them even if they have to draw a lot more frames.

Good luck.