I have a hive consisting of two deeps and one medium super of cut comb foundation. All kinds of bees in and ON the hive. I thought there was a space issue but upon inspection this past weekend, none of the cut comb foundation in the medium super had been drawn out. The super was full of bees just hanging out! This hive is strong and I don't want to lose any of them to a swarm.
Question #1: What can I do to encourage them to draw out the cut comb foundation?
In addition, I have a deep that I removed from another hive this weekend that had a little wax moth problem.
Question #2: Is there a issue with placing this deep (with about 40 pounds of nectar and honey) on this strong hive and letting them clean it up while giving them a little more room?
Is there a queen excluder under the undrawn super?
maybe they don't need it yet. just because there are tons of bees doesn't mean there tons of stuff coming in for them to store. what's your nectar flow like right now? how much brood are they raising? what kind of space do they have in the two deeps. by that i mean how many of the 20 frames are full of honey, pollen, brood......
Thanks for the info. This is a real puzzler!
No queen excluder. I only use them when I have hived a swarm and I want to make sure that the queen stays put.
Nectar flows are really strong right now. Tulip popular is in full bloom and they are storing a lot of nectar.
I placed a medium super out on the other side of the bee yard hoping that it would be robbed out (a minor wax moth problem) and the bees have not touched the stored nectar or honey contained in the super. I assume it's because the natural nectar is what they are focused on right now.
Thoughts?
Using two deeps in a flow reduces the need to store up in supers, so takes the bees longer to use them. Using a single deep with mediums above works well. They'll lay brood into the first, sometimes into the second medium, but will usually stay below that with brood, unless the nectar flow dries up in which case they will start eating up into the supers as needed until flows start again. The draw back to this is that sometimes you might feel the need to swap some frames but all frames won't be the same size. Sounds like you might run into that issue already anyways since you are running mixed box sizes already. In the fall, if you feel it's needed in your area, you can then pull off the mediums and set on a deep for your 2 deep nest for fall flows to build into winter.
UPDATE............
I removed a deep from another hive that had a little wax moth damage in an effort to reduce the space that the other hive had to protect.
Not being sure of what to do with this deep since it contained about 40 pounds of honey, uncapped nectar, and pollen, I decided to place it on this really strong hive that was not interested in drawing out a medium with cut comb foundation BUT appeared to be very crowded (and possibly swarming). Placed the deep on the hive late Monday afternoon.
Late yesterday afternoon after work, I noticed that there were a lot of bees coming and going, bringing in nectar but only a "normal" amount of bees were hanging out on the front of the hive! I am speculating that the additional 10 deep frames of comb gave them the space they needed to store nectar.
I'll keep a close watch on this hive to see if (1) the overcrowding situation reappears in a couple of weeks and (2) if this will encourage them to draw out the medium deep with only cut comb foundation.
Thanks!