Have two hives and one hive is producing honey but the other is not

Hi there. I’m a first time beekeeper and we inherited some hives when we bought the property (Midwest USA) late last fall. I bought two new nucs this spring and put two new Flow Supers on top of the existing brood boxes (two brood boxes plus a Flow Super for each hive).
One hive has done a great job of making honey and I’ve harvested it successfully. However, the other hive right next to it has not produced any honey. I can see that there are bees up in the Flow super but they are not producing honey. I’ve checked to make sure the Flow super is reset (using the metal key again on each frame) and the cells look correct. Any ideas as to why one hive would be producing but the one right next to it would not be? I need to do an inspection and take off the Flow super and look at the two brood boxes just to see what is going on, but I’m not totally sure what to look for. Any thoughts?

Thanks much!

Justin

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I’m gonna reply si I can see what people say, as I have a similar issue. So it’s six total weeks with bees in the super…lots of bees. I have a double brood box under (they were 80% full when I put the super on) and I live in Michigan, USA. I checked again yesterday and there is no honey. That’s two years w/o honey. I am getting disillusioned with my beekeeping. It is too late now as we are getting into fall. Any ideas why there may be lots of action–for weeks–in the flow super but no honey? What the heck are they doing up there???

myself included in TN. I have 3 flow frames that my bees love walking all over but absolutely no comb/honey. reset frames with key also. 2 of three needed adjusting. Guess its on to next year and hope.

I have a new theory, & I wonder if it actually happens. I wonder if for some reason one hive might have a few more nurse bees doing orientation flights than the other. So therefore the bees in the slightly weaker hive follow the crowd into the stronger hive, boosting it’s population, while not allowing the weaker hive to gain strength. Once that trend starts, it just continues. Maybe a good strategy would be to separate the two hives by a couple of meters, just to see what happens.

I think this kind of thing happens a lot with my own colonies. I inspected a colony the other day, because it was going nowhere. As it turns out, everything in the brood looked fine, it hadn’t swarmed, no sign of disease. I just think that the stronger hives on either side were getting a lot of the nurse bees during orientation flights.

@Tom_Frederick You/we need to be aware that honey production will be dependent on a few factors. Two variables being the strength of the colony (workers), coupled with available nectar…

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