Installed a three pound package in late April on all new foundation. Fed sugar syrup for the first month and then stopped when the dandelions came out. By mid July they have drawn six frames of the ten and the queen is laying nicely across four of them. Everyone at my club talks about supering by June and I am nowhere near that. Have I done something wrong or is this just what a first year package looks like?
Six drawn frames with a good laying pattern in mid July from an April package is a perfectly normal first year, and the people talking about supering in June are usually running overwintered colonies or splits on drawn comb, which is a completely different starting line. A package starts with no comb, no foragers of its own for three weeks, and a queen the bees have only just accepted. First year you are building a house. Second year you get honey.
It is the single most common reason new beekeepers think they are failing. Ask anyone at the club what their package did in year one and the tone changes.
That comparison had not occurred to me. Half the club is running splits off established hives.
One thing I would revisit: stopping the syrup when the dandelions appeared. If the goal is drawn comb, feeding a light syrup through any gap in the flow is the fastest way to get there, and comb drawn now is comb you never have to pay for again. I would feed again through August unless they are backfilling the brood nest.
Agreed, with one caution: stop feeding before you put any super on that you plan to eat from, and watch that they are not so busy storing syrup that the queen has nowhere to lay.
Your job for the rest of the season is weight and mites, not honey. Get them to overwintering weight, do a mite count in August, and next spring they will explode out of the box in a way that makes this year look silly.
@shore_power_shay · last mo.
Also normal for the last two outside frames never to get drawn in year one. Bees build in an arc, not a rectangle, and the corners are always last.
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