only about a half a frame of capped and uncapped larva. Is this normal for this time of year?
This is a new package from April and my first year beekeeping.
Initially there was a lot of laying when first installed.
The bees are very active and have lots of honey stored.
If you got the hive in April, hive should have now 5-6 boxes. Two boxes brood and 2 boxes honey and 1-2 empty boxes for new honey.
Honey must be extracted as soon as 1-2 boxes are capped. If you have hive too full of honey bees will loose their inspiration to gather new.
New beekeepers often are not aware to enlarge the hive, and hive will swarm. It ispossible that you hive has swarmed or twice and the new queen has started just laying eggs. - Why, because new beekeepers do not have experience to estimate the growth speed of colony.
When hive is full of honey brood area widden very slowly.
When honey flow is good, bees can swarm as soon as egg space is full of new honey. You can only have egg in the queen cap and old queen has gone. So you must wait 4 weeks after that new queen start to lay eggs.
When hive had bee a long time without brood, new nursing bees are few. New queen starts to widden brood area after that when colony gets enough newborn bees.
In Finland almost all natural flowers are nów gone. In one unit in outer place I hade 10 frames brood and in another place they had only 3 frames. The last one is in the middle of cuktivated fields and they must fly over 1 km to reach flowers.
You have summer there, I guess.
I suppose, that you have now new queen.
If you have capped honey, take it away. Arrange empty space for new honey and eggs.
I think that many has troubles when they start to store winter honey to bees in the middle of summer. If you like that, take capped honey away, give empty comps and before winter give them one box full of honey =25 kg in Langstroth.