I need a little advice here on what do do with my two hives in preparation for our first winter. Hive A is weak b/c it swarmed a while back, I introduced a new queen which they superseded immediately. The new queen has just started laying. They are in 2 deeps right now, and I just removed a medium between 60-70% full of honey but almost none capped, I'm trying to cut down the size of the hive so they can fill it up more efficiently for the winter. I plan on giving them this super of honey back but I'm wonder how to go about it, do I need to extract it and feed it back? I read in another post about letting bees clean extracted frames by placing the extracted super over the inner cover, would they move this much honey down this way?
My other hive (B) I was able to keep from swarming because they were a bit behind the other hive but now here we go into the 3rd week of august and they are filling up 3 deeps and a medium... Bees and brood galore! I know I need to size down this hive for winter too, but do I need to do this now or just leave them alone a while longer until they cut back? Or will they not cut back b/c their hive is so large? I guess I don't really know how much time I have before I really need to worry about their winter stores, I am going to be sure to leave enough honey but I have heard here in Nebraska 2 deeps is the way to go and that too much space is a bad thing over winter.
Any advice would really help as I try to prepare for our first winter.
Jay
ok maybe I asked too many questions in that post :-\ sorry, I'll modify it to see if someone can help me out a bit with at least this question, and maybe I can figure out the rest.
I have a really strong hive and a pretty weak hive. Can I just steal some brood and bees from the strong and add to the weak to even them up a bit, I know people do this when queenless but if both have queens will a frame or two of bees and brood disrupt the weak hive too much?
jay
>I have a really strong hive and a pretty weak hive. Can I just steal some brood and bees from the strong and add to the weak to even them up a bit
Yes. You can. Just don't weaken them too much.
> I know people do this when queenless but if both have queens will a frame or two of bees and brood disrupt the weak hive too much?
No, it will help. Emerging brood will help the most. Capped brood would be next best.
Quote from: Michael Bush on August 19, 2009, 07:35:56 AM
>I have a really strong hive and a pretty weak hive. Can I just steal some brood and bees from the strong and add to the weak to even them up a bit
Won't they fight?