This is our first year with a hive. We live in sunny Southern California- where the brood box quickly filled with comb, prolific egg production and honey. We added the super 4 weeks ago and there are bees in it, maybe only 100 bees or so and no production? They are building their own comb under it? Healthy otherwise and the brood box is still a big buzzing party. Is this normal? Thanks in advance!
Hi Trish, welcome to the forum. What you’re describing sounds normal. We need to wait until the worker population builds up sufficiently so that they can start storing excess honey, bearing in mind that they consume a lot of honey during the buildup process. Not to mention the daily consumption once the colony has built up.
@Dawn_SD (I’m guessing) will be able to fill you in with information as to when the honey flows in your area. However I guess SoCal covers a large area.
Hi Jeff! Thanks so much for replying! Dawn is probably about an hour south of me but I’m thinking the same climate. There are so many precious lives we are responsible for now! The pressure… are they happy? They work so hard! Take a break girls 
- then we are thinking- gosh all that buzzing and traveling flower to flower, returning with heavy yellow leg warmers all day long - where’s the honey?! Haha - kidding aside, we just want to make sure they are healthy and we are keeping our kids in the hive safe 
Did you rub some burr comb over the plastic Flow frames to make them smell like home to the bees? It helps a lot. We have been so dry down here, our nectar flow is almost over. Most people in San Diego take their last harvest around Independence Day and remove the supers after that. The exception is if you live in an area with a lot of later blooming plants (like Eucalyptus). Then you may get another flow in November/December, but i usually let the bees have that one, as it isn’t much around here.
Please ask any more questions you have and we will try to help.
3 Likes
Hi Dawn! Thanks for replying. So- we got our Nuc 4/25. They were super productive and quickly filled the brood box. We put sugar water in for about 10 days then removed it and replaced the feeder with 2 empty frames and they quickly filled that and are busy in there still. But the super is just kinda there. There are bees and they are building more of their own comb on the bottom- but as far as we can tell nothing inside. I will rub some wax on it tomorrow. When you say the last harvest does that mean that’s it for the year? I’m thinking we might not be as dry as you (but this is our first time- so I have no clue!) we are less than 2 miles from the beach, so maybe a little less dry- and we live around the corner from a nursery and a lot of citrus (4 avo trees and 6 citrus in our yard- not enough for them to fill a super with honey but… gosh I hope we get a little honey this year? Do you know anyone in our area that has bees? And THANK YOU!
I have similar issue regarding bees not filling the flow super. Last year, new hive, I decided after a couple of weeks that I should replace my flow super with a second brood box to give my hive more resources to establish themselves and make ample stores for the winter. As Dawn suggested this time last year, I stored the flow frames with (very minimal/beginning traces of honey) in the freezer. Indeed the hive built up well, wintered successfully. With 80% of the frames filled with brood and several weeks ago I added the Flow super on top of the two lower boxes. I added a few pieces of burr comb to the flow super on top of several frames. I se a few random bees exploring the flow frames but no appreciable working of the frames as of last week. Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Thanks!