If it ever warms enough I plan to pull the lower deep brood box so I can transition to mediums. What if I find two or three frames of brood in the lower box? Can I take them up into the upper box just to get rid of the lower or would that be too disruptive to the brood nest? How warm must it be before I can do this?
50F/10F or higher for more than three days in row. I would think 60F/15.5C would be better.
Sincerely,
Brendhan
Quote from: twb on April 02, 2008, 11:13:42 PM
If it ever warms enough I plan to pull the lower deep brood box so I can transition to mediums. What if I find two or three frames of brood in the lower box? Can I take them up into the upper box just to get rid of the lower or would that be too disruptive to the brood nest? How warm must it be before I can do this?
I did just that very thing last summer. There was one frame of brood left in the bottom deep super. I took it out and placed it in the top medium and it just hung down into the next medium below it. I placed it at the outer edge of the medium super so the bees would not keep using it. After the brood popped out, then I just removed it. There were some frames of pollen also in the bottom deep and I cut them down to mediums so I could use that food source for them.
It worked out fine.
Annette
The other way would be to move the deep above a queen excluder, making sure the queen is in the mediums, and once the brood has hatched out remove it completely. One of the few uses of a queen excluder IMO.
>What if I find two or three frames of brood in the lower box?
You can always do a cutout. Brush off the bees (back into the hive). Cut the brood comb to fit a medium frame and tie it in. You can also fill the deep with mediums except for those two or three frames and IF the bees build they will probably build on the mediums and you can cut any extra wax off the bottoms later. If it's all capped brood in 11 or 12 days it will all emerge and you can pull it.