Three of my hives I have now supered, they all have a lot of honey in the second (top) deep. Once the bees get the supers drawn out will they move honey from the deeps into the super so as to give the queen more room? Or, should i be pulling honey from the deeps to make room now?
I in the same boat they have the top body almost full of goodness and also filled a good part of the first super (7 frames) so I stuck the second on. Hoping they will pull it up to store it.
I am seeing similar issues here...curious what the experts have to say.
they don't move it if it's capped. if your brood boxes are crammed with frames of honey, replace some so that the queen continues to have room to lay. freeze the frames of honey to feed back later in the year, or if you are sure they were not filled with syrup earlier in the year, extract.
If you pull out a deep frame of honey and feed it back to them, won't they then put it in the med. super?
Hey didn't think of that, I am sure they would however if you pull the frame and feed back bet there would be some major robbing. Would have to place the frame far from the hives. I want to wait a week to go back through the hives and If I still have full frames of honey in the deeps I am going to see how many, if enough I will extract, if not I will put them 50 yards from the hives and feed them back then put the clean comb back in the hives for the queen to lay in. I am really hoping to get some honey off this thistle that is in heavy bloom now, if not then I will or should still get a good bunch of goldenrod honey. Whatever I do get will be good!! I have not fed anything this year. It caused the bees to be slower in drawing comb but That is ok with me. I am still thinking the less feed the better as long as I don't starve the bees. I have my hopes really high that the swarms that I caught this year are all ferral and will winter well. Then next year oh boy!
And how will you train the little boogers to put it all up in the honey super and not just put it back in your deeps? Hint: extract or freeze!
I have tiny leashes, and they respond well to both positive reinforcement and clicker training! :-D :-D
Quote from: harvey on July 14, 2010, 11:24:01 PM
Three of my hives I have now supered, they all have a lot of honey in the second (top) deep. Once the bees get the supers drawn out will they move honey from the deeps into the super so as to give the queen more room? Or, should i be pulling honey from the deeps to make room now?
One good reason we use all lg.boxes for brood and supers,we move our honey up when we add supers.
Kathy hit it on the head. They won't move capped honey without an awful lot of pressure. If you uncap it they will be more likely to move it. But then it's always some combiniation of needs and drives that causes bees to do anything, so there are no guarentees...
Ok....here's a stupid question. The way the comments in this thread read to me, it sounds like capped honey from the brood box can only be used to feed back to the bees or frozen and then fed to the bees later. Is that right? So much to learn....I love it!
you can extract it for you if you know that it's not from syrup that you fed earlier. if you feed, that's hard to know, so it's better to give it to the bees. also why you don't put honey supers on and feed at the same time :-)