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  • From: Walter Starks <walterstarks AT icloud.com>
  • To: English Family <englishfamily06 AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Not much room for brood
  • Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2016 15:06:37 -0400

This is really just an opinion, but if you think the brood section looks crowded you should remove frames of capped honey and store them. Replace with frames of foundation. The bees will draw it out very quickly.

I don't think you want the bees to move honey that has been exposed to some of the varroa treatments into a super that you plan to extract from. I think they would be more likely to start laying in your super anyway.

Personally, I like to keep all my brood boxes the same size. 2 deeps or 3 mediums. I don't think a deep and a medium is quite as much space and a lack of space is one cause of swarms. In your situation, I would probably get another deep and put it into use in late winter or early spring next year. Again, just my opinion. Another option would be to replace the deep with 2 mediums.

______

Walter


You never can tell with bees. ~ Winnie-the-Pooh

On Apr 27, 2016, at 2:26 PM, English Family <englishfamily06 AT gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I am a relatively new beekeeper (about 6 years).  This is the first year I have taken over all decision making for our hives and I feel like I am brand new!  This is also one of the first years we have been more aggressively managing hives for longevity.

Our current situation:
One colony that consists of from bottom to top: one deep, one medium, one small honey super with drawn out frames
The medium super is full of capped honey, but this is the honey we leave for the bees to over winter and this box is what we consider our second hive body.  (There is no option to harvest this honey as these frames and foundation have been on the hive through both Fall and Spring treatment of Varroa)
The small honey super is ours (and wasn't on the hive until a few weeks ago)

Coming in to Spring, the bees were using the medium for some brood and then the queen moved down, the bees filled the medium and capped it all.  A few weeks ago I noticed some supercedure and swarm cells.  I am a little gun shy about interfering with this process and wasn't quite ready to consider splitting (hindsight).   Then two weeks ago, the colony sent out two swarms on the same day and we watched (with tears) as they both landed in 100ft tall oak trees, and then over the course of a day left.  Apparently they didn't find our swarm traps desirable. 

I checked last week and found a few open queen cells and a calm hive and a glimpse of what I thought was our queen as she scurried away out of sight.  Today, those queen cells have been removed and I saw a beautiful queen, and eggs!  So looks like our new girl is doing her job.  I did not go through every frame today as not to disturb the new girl but here is what I saw over the last two inspections:

The hive body seems to be full of pollen and nectar as well as at least 3 frames of capped honey located toward the outsides of the box.  My guess is they filled in a lot of the brood space as they were waiting for the new queen.  The medium is still full of capped honey and on top of the medium is our honey super that the bees are working on slowly.  I am worried that the queen will not have room to lay eggs.  The current frame she was on seemed to be mostly empty, but my guess based on what I have seen is that she doesn't have that much space in the other frames as most of them had stored nectar and pollen (again I didnt go through every frame today)  Also, the population, as expected is low, but I expect a boom in the coming weeks since the queen is laying!  I did see a few queen cups on the frame where I saw the queen, so I do have some concern that they may be feeling honey bound and may attempt to swarm again. 

So here are my questions:
1) will the bees move nectar/honey from the deep super to upper supers to make room for brood
2) should I add empty frames to the brood chamber and remove the capped honey from the brood chamber for storage and Fall feeding (we only have replacement foundation (not drawn out) for brood frames, so the bees would have to start from scratch)
3) should I add another entire hive body or medium super with undrawn frames (our only option since i have no drawn frames at the moment)
4) any other suggestions?


Also, we would like to get at least one honey super from the hive, so whatever we can do to give them space without discouraging them from filling our super! 

thanks
Melissa
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