Okay, so we went out to the hives this past Saturday after leaving them alone for three weeks. We had added the 2nd deep box to both hives and were anxious to see how much work had been accomplished in foundation construction. We have two hives which were new package installs May 2nd. 10-frame deep brood boxes which we fed 1:1 for the first 4 wks, then let them work the flow that was on. At about 8-9 weeks they had both built foundation on 8 of 10 deep frames, so we added a 2nd deep box with 10 new frames (all plastic foundation wood frames) to each hive. So, roll forward to this past Saturday. Both hives have performed very little comb construction as far as we can tell. Our stronger hive had just begun to build out one side of one frame in the upper deep box...a spot about 4-5 inches in diameter. The weaker hive had not touched the top box frames yet. Interesting thing about this is that when we stand and watch the hives, both are very busy with bees coming and going at a feverish pace. White clover is prevalent right now and when I stand in my yard I see them working the clover like mad. So, assuming there is not a good flow, we decided to add the feeders back on the hives and feed again. We put a half gallon of 1:1 in each feeder yesterday evening. We will check the feeders on Tuesday to see if the bees are taking it in. Also, we took one frame of brood from the middle of each lower box and swapped it with an empty middle frame of the top box to help spur on construction in the top box.
Are we doing anything wrong here?
Are we doing anything wrong here?