Hi folks,
I am a fiercely curious newbie at this beekeeping stuff. I live in the lovely mild Bay Area of California. I need to ask lots of
questions. But I love getting into the hive and poking around to try and learn.
So as I have posted before I now have one good vigorous hive. I united a weak
and a strong hive about 3 weeks ago and about 2-3 weeks ago I put all the bees
in my bottom box and left the upper box with empty, but drawn comb. 2 weeks ago
I put on a super with foundation that had not been drawn. I stopped feeding
syrup cause the neighborhood is bursting with flowers- fruit trees , rosemary,
Bay laurel, Viburnums.
So today was another glorious warm day and I went in to the hive to check it out
and found that the queen was in the upper box, There was lots of nice young
brood in the middle two frames up top and some nectar being stored at the sides
of these frames. The outer most frames up top were still undrawn and had no
stores. None of the foundation on the super had been drawn out and there were
only a very few bees in the whole super. I am not using queen excluders.
The lower deep has capped brood in a good pattern in the center 2 frames but the
bees aren't paying much attention to the outer frames in the lower box - There
are no stores there. and there is one frame that hasn't had any repairs done to
damaged cells.
So my question ( Long winded, amn't I?)
1. Why isn't any wax being laid down at this time? Would I be better putting
drawn frames in my super at this time?
2. Should I try to switch stores down from the upper deep into the sides of that
lower box to try to keep the center of the upper box open to try to discourage
swarming?
Any help would be appreciated.
Richard
the simple answer is that they don't need it yet.
in your brood box, you can rotate some of those undrawn frames toward the middle. same with the lower box if you want to dig down there. i'd probably just leave it.
when they need room to store they will draw and use the supers. until then, they are concerned with building up and storing around the brood. yes, you do need to watch that they do not get honey bound, but it doesn't sound like you there.
Your enthusiasm is outpacing your bees. Oh to be young again...., however I believe you need to make a few rearrangements.
Like Kathy said they don't need the space yet, I'm not familiar with your location but it seems to me that the super is not needed yet, I would remove it until the second brood is nearly filled, at least eight frames drawn and covered with bees and stores.
If your bottom brood is not yet filled out to at least eight frames of bees, brood and stores you shouldn't have the second brood on it yet either. In that is the case move the two frames of brood down into the center of the lower brood nest along with any stores if there are any. When the lower brood box is in above stated condition, then add the next brood.
You can't hurry nature, the bees will expand as they can and on their own schedule. Later, after both broods are nearly filled and before you add the super, you can experiment with checkerboarding the brood nest. Come to think of it, you can checkerboard some when you add the second brood box.
he's in a temperate area with a good flow. i think he's ok with the second brood box. he's probably fine with the supers on. the weather won't hurt him at this point.
it's just patience he needs :evil:
i don't know if i'd want to be young again, but living in CA again would be nice......at least the weather part.
They'll draw wax when they have the flow and population. Assuming they have the population (the 80% rule is a good one to follow) they need flow. If there's no flow going on you can feed them syrup to get the ball rolling. Make sure not to have any supers on that are going to be extracted to avoid them storing syrup instead of honey though.
I agree with all stated above. The only thing I might could add is re-coating them with bees wax. I have rotated outside frames inwards, alternating drawn with undrawn frames and had them sit undrawn and or had them draw freehanging leafs of comb aginnst the foundation for years on end. I had a fella tell me about re-dipping the whole frame and foundation in bees wax and tried it with sucess. fill a pot big enough to dip a frame, 2/3 water and 1/3 wax, bring to melting point and submerge frame in removing slowly. Gives the whole frame a nice coating of wax that the bees can reform and draw into comb.