Mailing list for the Person County Beekeepers Association, Roxboro, NC

[donnasteen AT yahoo.com]

To any Experienced Beekeepers who Enjoy Solving Problems:

I started the winter with 2 hives. 

I have all medium, 8 frame supers.

This winter one hive died--way too small.

The other one wasn't strong so I fed it sugar cakes I made right on top of the frames over the ball of bees.  They ate 2 sugar cakes over the winter (pie plate size), plus some small pieces of pollen patties.

The hive I don't know what to do with is was stacked as follows:

Top Cover

Inner Cover

3. Top super: empty--used for sugar cake and bits of pollen patty(same medium/8-frame size)

2. Middle super: 8 frames (a medium size ball of bees at the beginning of winter)

1. Bottom super: 8 frames

Today's Inspection Revealed: LOTS MORE BEES

When I started to take off the Inner Cover--I saw comb attached, so didn't take it off!

Next I took off the Top Super with the Inner Cover still on top--setting it cross ways on the inverted top lid on the ground.

When I looked back at The Middle Super--it had HUGE mounds of honey comb Full of CAPPED AND OPEN BROOD!  The rest of the mounds were still fastened to the Inner Cover and were still in the Top Super!!!

BUT I noticed that at least a huge majority of the capped brood had very rounded caps like for drones????

Lots of brood was exposed--having had their homemade hive torn apart! :(

I replaced the Top super on top of the Middle Super--gently maneuvering to make the comb puzzle fit back together the best I could!

Then I took Inner Cover AND the Top and Middle supers all off together--and set them down on the Top Cover so i could look in the bottom box.  The bottom box had a fair amount of bees, but not so many as the top two supers. There were bees on all the frames.  I did not take time to look at the frames--I was pretty shaken by now!!  So I put a super with empty drawn comb on top of that bottom super, so they would have some place to work, and then replaced the top two and put a 5th super on top of the inner cover.  Bees were all over the top of the inner cover, so I figured they would go through there to the top super. I didn't have another inner cover with me, so I'll have to put it on tomorrow. 

I'm sure I've only made a worse mess than the first mess I made!  But here is the current line-up.

Outer cover

5th Super -- I added -- has empty drawn comb

Inner Cover has comb fastened to it from the 4th Super

4th Super (was empty) now full of comb with no frames and LOTS of brood and capped brood.

3rd Super has towers of comb on top of it so I couldn't look at the frames.

2nd Super -- I added -- has empty drawn comb.

1st Super has lots of bees, but I did not inspect the frames.  (I was too shaken! :)

I so wish I had pictures!!!

It was an amazing sight to behold!!!

However, if any of you experts can figure out where I go from here, I'll appreciate it!

Donna Steen