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  • From: "Fadem, Bronwyn Elizabeth" <bfadem AT live.unc.edu>
  • To: "ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] Rearranging Hives: Beginner's experience
  • Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Hello OCBA!


I just wanted to share my experience/observations/results as a new beekeeper for others in case it can be of any help! Full disclosure: I took over the keeping of 2 hives that had been established for 4 years, so I skipped what seems to be the hardest part (starting the hive) and split one of the hives last summer so now I have 3. I have asked many questions and learned almost everything I know about beekeeping from your advice, observations, and experiences over the past year, and I am so thankful and want to share my recent experiment with others!


A few weeks ago, I consulted the forum about what to do with my 3 very uneven hives: Hive A had a single deep with 2-3 frames of bees and almost no honey (very weak), Hive B had a single deep and single shallow with 4 frames of bees and small amount of honey/pollen (weak), and Hive C had a single deep and single shallow with jam packed with bees and strong honey stores (strong/on the brink of swarm). I wondered what to do and got multiple answers (I once was told "ask 5 beekeepers for advice and you'll get 7 different answers"), one person suggested combing the two weak hives and a couple others suggested rearranging some frames from the strong hive.


Lesson 1 I have learned: there is more than 1 right answer to every question and it really is dependent on your hive, in your environment and you just have to experiment sometimes and see what works best! So, because I wanted to try to keep three hives and 3 queens, I decided to rearrange-- I put 2 frames of brood with nurse bees and one frame of honey from hive C (making sure they didn't have the queen) into Hive A and 2 frames of brood with nurse bees from Hive C into Hive B. I then put the empty frames from Hives A and B into Hive C and also added another shallow super. Lesson 2: I've seen quite a few people ask (including myself) "when do you know when to add space??" Well, my answer is that I think it should be pretty obvious!! Hive C was absolutely teeming with bees, every frame was covered, so without a doubt it was time to add space!


Fast forward to today, 3 weeks later, and I am SO PLEASED with the results. Hive A now has a solid 6 frames of bees and is slowly building up some honey, and Hive B is also twice as strong as it was. Hive C seemed to not even notice that I took the frames,, all three supers are packed with bees and they are on their way to filling both shallows. There was brood in all three supers, as well, so, because I want to harvest honey this season, I also went ahead and made sure the queen was in the bottom deep super, added a second deep on top, and then put on a queen excluder. Since I found a swarm cell, I destroyed it and then also interspersed some empty frames in the deep brood chamber and put a single frame of brood in the middle of the new deep I added (Randall had instructed several others to do this method when trying to add space in the brood chamber to prevent a swarm). Now, I hope I've avoided the swarm and will have some beautiful wildflower honey in the next month or so!


If you have any questions about what I did or are having any similar problems as a new beek, I'd be happy to clarify what I did!


Many, many thanks to each of you who has responded to my many questions over the past year-- this has been an awesome learning experience and ya'll are INVALUABLE!


Bronwyn





  • [ocba] Rearranging Hives: Beginner's experience, Fadem, Bronwyn Elizabeth, 03/21/2017

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