Hi Scott,

Thanks for reaching out with this question and for your nice note!

It's great to hear that your bees are drawing comb and that there are eggs in the new comb. Feeding syrup and having a nectar flow helps bees to draw comb.

Colonies that are hived with frames of foundation can run out of space, but the goal is to give them plenty of resources to draw lots of comb. I think that it makes sense to continue feeding them syrup as long as you're not finding queen cells or backfilling in terms of syrup/nectar stored in between brood cells.

One optional strategy you could consider is moving frames around a bit. You want to keep the brood frames together in the center of the box. You can move food frames (stored honey, nectar, syrup, or pollen) that don't have brood to the edges of the box and then put frames of foundation between the brood and food frames. You'll want to keep the frames pushed together tightly so that the bees don't build burr comb between or off of the frames. Putting foundation frames between the brood nest and food frames may encourage bees to draw comb more quickly and expand the brood nest.

Happy beekeeping!

Hi Scott,

Sounds good! Comb can get a little crowded when colonies are hived on foundation, but it sounds like your bees are on track. I think moving the frames around will also help a bit.

Thanks,

I went back in on Sunday 5/21. I found the attached cups. One of them has what I think is royal jelly. The others you can't see well from the pics but a couple have eggs and a couple are empty. I panicked and smushed the one that had jelly. Right now my plan is go to back on Thursday (4days) and see what has happened with the others. The nuc came with this extra comb built on the bottom but it has gotten bigger since then and has a bunch of drone cells. If the cups weren't there I would probably just scrape it all off the bottom so things can be neater and I'm not ripping cells open when I pull the frames. 

The brood frame in the box you can see below the frame I am holding is all hatched and empty w/out eggs. So she has room to lay. The other frames have plenty of larvae and eggs and I spotted the queen as well, so everything else seems to be in order. I'd say we're around 80% drawn comb in the box so I added another. The population seems pretty high but centrally located. Not many bees on the outer frames but they are spilling out the inner cover hole into the empty medium feeder box. 

They are still taking 1:1 syrup but it has slowed down. They are still bringing in plenty of pollen and nectar and their temperament hasn't changed at all.

Thursday. If I see they haven't done anything new with the cups would I be okay to scrape that mess off? If they are capped I'm guessing I would attempt a walk-away split? I don't have any small equipment though, only 10 frame. I'm worried that if I split now both hives would be very small with very little resources and be too far behind to expand enough to survive winter. 

Thanks for following up with photos!

It's normal for colonies to build queen cups (empty cells for raising queens). Even colonies that aren't trying to raise a new queen will build queen cups.

Once we see brood in the queen cup, we call it a queen cell. It was a little hard to tell from the photo, but it looked like you had a queen cell with a young larva. It sounds like you squished it, which is fine.

Yes, you can remove the comb from the bottom of the frame, as long as you first check that the queen isn't there and you're not going to squish her in the process.

At this time of year, it's really common for colonies to try to raise new queens, either to swarm or supersede. Sometimes they commit to swarming, and sometimes they don't. I would continue to inspect the colony regularly and squish open queen cells. If you find sealed queen cells, you should first make sure your queen is still there (that the bees didn't already swarm) before squishing queen cells. In my experience of regularly removing open queens cells, bees will eventually stop trying to raise queens after we get past the "swarmiest" period of the season.

You mentioned you added a second box. You can move a frame that is drawn to the middle of the second box to encourage bees to work in the new box.

Happy beekeeping!

P.S. Given that your bees are drawing comb and you've added a second box and we expect several upcoming nectar flows, you could stop feeding syrup.

Hi Scott,

Sounds good! And yes, Dixie Sandborn reached out. How cool that is your mother-in-law!

Ana