Here's what I saw in my inspection 4 days after installation. (I was going in to check just to see if the queens had been released, cause there was no candy and I had stuff a marshmallow in the hole.)
Hive 1 I definitely saw eggs. Just look for very tiny grain of rice, tiny, tiny. (They are hard to see for 40-year-old types with their near-sightedness going!) But you can definitely see them.
Hive 2 I'm not sure if I saw them or not. (It could have been the queen was not out long enough to get going.) Probably not... So....
But I was surprised at how easy it was to see the queens in both hives (Carnolians sp?). They stuck out like sore thumbs. I saw them on the second or thrird frame of each.
Sounds like everything else you described is like my starts. Drawing plenty of comb, eating the syrup at about the same rate, pollen, etc.
Quint
So next time you