Ida, Were there many bees in the super? Bees will build comb only if there is a nectar source and if they need room for storage. Check the upper brood box and see if there are signs that the queen is up there laying(eggs,capped or uncapped larvae) Note where the most activity is. Carefully pull out end frames first and work toward the center. Is the whole deep filled with honey? You can pull some capped frames (of honey) and replace with frames of foundation. You can store full frames of honey in the freezer and thaw them and give them back to the bees if they need it.

thanks, Tony. Will check on Wed. When we eyeballed the uppper brood box, we could see a mass of bees right under the queen excluder, but we did not look further. I will.

Marie

Remove the queen excluder or give them an upper entrance to more easily access the upper box.You can move the super ahead about a quarter to three eighths of an inch to let the bees access through the crack you create.

Today we inspected the single honey super and the upper brood box. There were bees in the honey super but only one frame had comb, and that was a hunk of burr comb. There was honey in it. Every other frame looked like the day it was put in.

Top brood box. Packed, I mean packed with bees. Our smoker went out, and they were getting really onery, so we checked two outside and one interior frame. One outside foundation was partially filled and capped. I did not see larvae, but it has been almost a year since I looked in a hive for larvae, so it is possible I may have missed it. Like a grain of rice, correct? The inner foundation was 7/8 drawn out, cells with honey and some with pollen, I think. The cells were a different texture, rougher texture than capped cells, more yellow brown than creamy. Def. not that nice smooth surface.

I was not even looking for a queen at that point.
If this is not enough information, give me some more to observe, and I'll do a better job with the smoker.

Obviously, we get no honey for ourselves this year but I would like to know what the problem is.

idabean,
I had a similar situation recently, and inquired about it here on this forum. The general nature of the advice went like this---allow the bees to start working a super and drawing out comb before putting the queen excluder on. Hope this helps.
ThisBud4U

A quick message from my bee teacher suggested that the extended period of wet, cool weather has affected honey production. She didn't seem inclined to worry. As long as the hive is healthy, I guess there's not much to do about it; we're not commercial, so its disappointing but not our livelihood.

Pull out the queen excluder until they draw out the foundation. They don't like to start new work on the other side of an excluder.

long conversation with our local bee advisor, who also said to pull the excluder. She also reported a slew of questions from concerned local beekeepers who reported nearly no honey production. Her opinion is that the several weeks of constantly wet weather and downpours have resulted in dismal honey production. We were reassured by her that what ever mistakes we may have made were minor in comparison to the effect of this extended weather pattern.

Her advice: sit tight and hope for dry weather. We could pull out a couple or few of drawn foundations in the brood chamber and replace with new ones, but that is not going to affect the production in any major way at this point.

She was at a beekeepers convention last week and reported that projects to get rid of purple loosestrife are becoming more successful, to the distress of commercial beekeepers. They may want to regain natural habitat, too, but purple loosestrife is a major food source for bees.

We still have some good production time if the weather would co-operate, but I heard rain again tomorrow. It didn't rain today yet and I think we had at least one other day this month with no rain. So in the next few weeks the bees will fill all of the supers with honey. There is still lots of stuff in bloom around here, and hopefully we'll have goldenrod.