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Author Topic: Little to no activity in honey supers  (Read 1195 times)

Offline Parksguyy

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Little to no activity in honey supers
« on: June 17, 2013, 03:22:34 pm »
Hey everyone,
New Cdn beek here as of last summer ... went into the winter with 4 hives and came out with them doing well.  One is alittle weaker than the others but has been from day one.  Literally no mites last fall, and didn't attempt to take any honey either last summer.
This spring, we fed the girls fondant initially then followed that with pollen patties.  Total inspection this past weekend, things look great .. lots of brood and activity.  We reversed the two brood chambers each of the hives has two or more weeks ago and installed screened bottom boards at that time.  We also installed a honey super on all the hives without a queen excluder, having read that the girls won't go thru one if there is no drawn comb above.  Since we did that, there has been lots of activity in those supers ... lots of bees up there ... but as of Saturday, they are still not drawing any of the comb out?  Why is that ... there is definitely a flow on ... maybe not the best given the cool, wet weather we have had, but we have also seen some pretty nice weather too.  Could it be that they are simply busy down below doing their thing and have no need to make me some honey yet?  This is all new to me, so any suggestions would be awesome.  Thanks
     

Offline marktrl

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Re: Little to no activity in honey supers
« Reply #1 on: June 17, 2013, 04:51:14 pm »
They'll fill the honey super when they are ready, bees do what they want when they want.

Offline Steel Tiger

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Re: Little to no activity in honey supers
« Reply #2 on: June 18, 2013, 09:14:10 am »
I took a broken frame from my deeps, cut the comb out and then cut it in half so it would fit into two medium frames and put those into the new mediums. Bot hives quickly attached the comb to the frame and one of the hives really took off building new comb. They had the box almost full in 2 weeks so I added another box last week.

Offline Parksguyy

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Re: Little to no activity in honey supers
« Reply #3 on: June 18, 2013, 09:30:57 am »
Thanks guys,
I think it is just a waiting game at the moment to be honest.  We had a late spring (some would say a more normal one compared to the the past few), so everything is slightly behind.  There is no indication of any issues within the hives, they are all doing well, lots of capped brood, lots of pollen coming in, etc.  We have 15 acres of sunflowers planted but they are alittle behind given the weather.
When it happens it will take off I suspect.