How are your new hives doing?

Hi All,

I'm curious how everyone's 2010-started hives are doing as we move into our tenth week (for those of us who installed packages at the end of April). Please share your progress in this thread (e.g., how many supers are fully drawn, do you think you may get any honey this year, how often have you been inspecting, any signs of varroa / beetles, how long did you feed syrup)!

My two hives --- both are all 8-frame mediums, so take that into account if comparing against a 10-frame hive or a hive with deeps --- are now each 5-mediums tall. The first hive has totally filled medium #4 with honey (but it is not yet all capped) and has just started to draw out medium #5, although comb-building seems to be happening more slowly now. The second hive has drawn out all of medium #4 but it isn't yet full of honey and hasn't touched #5 (i.e., hasn't started any building whatsoever up there). I'm not using queen excluders. I think that I may be able to harvest a small amount of honey from the first hive this year, although I want to make sure that I leave the bees enough to overwinter --- I plan to overwinter with four 8-frame mediums --- so that will depend on how much progress that hive makes into the fifth medium over the next week or two.

On the health front, I have not seen any evidence of varroa, hive beetles, or any other problems like that. To double-check, I've (1) twice --- once in May and again this month --- put sticky grid boards under the screened bottom boards and saw no varroa after 24 and 48 hours and (2) placed mineral-oil filled beetle blaster traps in the hives and have caught no beetles. So I'm pretty sure that I'm not missing any problems along those lines.

I inspect my hives at least once per week. (Looking back through my beekeeping journal, I have opened the hives 13 times over the last 10 weeks not including the weekend that they were first installed, although at least one of those times was a Sunday-opening to add a medium following a Saturday-inspection where I learned that they could use it but I didn't have enough frames put together yet.)

I fed syrup for 7 weeks (until the bees pretty much stopped taking it). Took off the feeders and entrance reducers (which at that point had been moved to the larger opening) on June 11.

Would appreciate any comments on my situation and also to hear how others are progressing!

- A