NUC inspection - so-so

Yesterday (Friday) I decided to go check out the little gray nuc that I moved out of my bee-yard since it was being robbed. It's been a little over 2 weeks since I moved the nuc, so I would expect the queen to have started laying (things being calm).

After popping off the top, I saw some bees hovering over a couple of frames in the nuc:

The first couple of frames (counting from the bottom of the nuc in the picture above) were pretty - empty. Plenty of places for the queen to lay. Unfortunately, also empty were any honey stores! I had put on a jar of sugar syrup 2 weeks ago, and it was empty. So these bees don't have enough to eat. Luckily I brought another quart bottle of sugar syrup to feed the bees.

I did see evidence of the queen laying. Here are pictures of a couple of the frames:

You can see some young larvae in the pictures above, so the queen is doing her job. The brood pattern really isn't good (you want a solid pattern, with few gaps); but I attribute that to the fact that they had no food - a queen won't lay if there isn't enough to eat.

I'll stop by every few days to feed the hive, and hopefully it'll take off.