my most productive hive has been going gangbusters. I put the fifth super on 2 weeks ago and they are happy to keep filling them. Was planning on extracting next week. Yesterday did an inspection and was going to put capped supers on top in preperation to pull them and found four frames in the bottom shallow honey super with all stages of brood, above the queen excluder! My best guess is that at a previous inspection when I removed the top medium brood box I must have placed it too close to one of the honey supers and the queen jumped boxes. Is this likely and if so would the workers clear out an area of previously filled honey cells to allow the queen to lay? The bottom deep had no brood and was being filled with nectar. I've been running a deep and a medium as a brood chamber. Since I couldn't find the queen in such a large hive I removed the excluder and left the capped honey supers above the newly created brood box. I think I will need to try to get the queen to move down because the box with the new brood is not only a shallow but it has only 9 frames with separators for honey storage. I'm in my second year and I'm starting to wonder how many ways there are to screw up!?
there are lots of ways to screw up. just wait and see!!! :evil:
sounds like you had a good plan. a number of things could have happened including the queen going through the excluder.
one thing you might consider and maybe for next season, is more brood space. in a booming hive like that they probably need at least the equivalent of 2 deeps. not to worry about that brood, it will hatch out and they will eventually back fill that with honey, but, if the queen is out of laying room as i suspect she is, you need to either sacrifice your honey super for the time being, or expand the brood chamber.
you could pull some frames of honey from the bottom if it's capped, and replace those frames with foundation or drawn frames if you have them. pull the frames around the brood to give her more room. freeze and save the honey frames to feed back in winter.
Why not just take the supers that are being filled with brood, place them on the bottom, then take your deep full of nectar, and put it above the excluder?
It'll be pretty heavy to move, but it seems like the easiest, and quickest solution to your problem. Once you extract your deeps, put it back in the original position.
is it no problem that the super that has brood is 9 frames in a 10 frame box with frame spacers or are they likey to make a mess of it? If not I can certainly add some empty frames to it to provide more space. Or I could do that in the deep box. I'm in the process of changing to all medium equipment so all these different sizes won't be an issue any more.
Quote from: TheMasonicHive on May 27, 2010, 01:22:21 PM
Why not just take the supers that are being filled with brood, place them on the bottom, then take your deep full of nectar, and put it above the excluder?
Nothing bad has happened.
rearrange the box system. Search the queen. It is easy. It is probably in the frame where you see most bees. Dont use smoke when you search the queen.
Put the boxes in the order. First lowest pollen frames. Them empty comb box and one brood frame. Put the quen into empty box.
Then excluder and all young brood over the excluder and then older brood and then pure honey frames. Partly capped top most.
After 2 weeks most brood have emerged and frames are full of honey.
Empty box + queen is one method to prevent swarming.
"Dont' use smoke when you search for the queen" Interesting, now that I think about it the only time I've seen a queen laying is when I found her without using smoke. I may have to try that, as long as they are calm. I've found plenty of queens while using smoke and I keep getting better, but if it improves my odds I'll try it.