Okay, we had been feeding our two new packages a steady uninterrupted diet of 1:1 sugar syrup. The frames were filling out with foundation very quickly. Last Tuesday, we pulled the feeders as this time of the year is the nectar flow and we could risk problems of overfeeding. We inspected the hives on Saturday and the bees had not made any visible progress from the previous inspection of a week earlier. We are concerned that maybe the nectar is not flowing in our location and the bees are suffering as a result. We noticed just today that, due to a late freeze, our blackberries are just now blooming. The fields here have wild clover that has been in bloom now for over a week. To add insult to injury, I did another close inspection of the newest brood cells in our one hive for which we have yet to see the queen and it appears that no eggs are in any of the finished brood cells. Also, those cells are a very dark brown color. At first the brood cells were yellow while the honey cells were whiter. What causes these brood cells to turn this dark chocolate brown color? This is becoming a very frustrating hobby.