Good Day to all! I am new to the forum and in my first spring of keeping bees. My hive wintered fabulous, I had one deep and 2 mediums and then the girls went on a buzz about. I rehived the largest swarm, gave away a smaller one. Now I had 2 hives both with queens that I actually saw. 10 day inspection later. Swarm hive is doing great the queen has a strong brood pattern. The original hive is Queenless...No eggs, no brood .. empty cells .. so sad :(
Now comes the question. I did a newspaper combine. They are living happily together, But I need to stack the combined hive in the correct order. This is what I have.
super -orig hive drawn nectar, honey
super-orig. hive drawn with some capped honey
queen excluder
Deep-orig. hive drawn frames no brood
super - from swarm (Queen and brood)
Deep- from swarm -brood
Long story short... Where would her majesty like to lay her eggs? do I put the empty deep above or below the box with the queen?
Thanks so much. So much to learn, this is going to be a lifetime of questions
MsBhavn
my preference early in the year is to put the empty under the one with brood. bees tend to work downward early in the year and back up later. i find that by putting the empty under, i almost never have to manipulate frames to make the bees move....however, my weekend at buds gave me some good instruction (thanks Alan) on this. he felt that if the frames were drawn, putting the new box over the brood was just fine. one advantage would be that it's easier to check.
are there any of those boxes that you'd like to remove? maybe the super from the swarm? if so, i'd put that one on top and hope that queen moved down off of it you could remove it after the brood hatched out.
whatever you choose, keep the brood together.
and you'll probably get lots of ideas, so wait for them :-D
How long had it been since the swarm when you did the newspaper combine? Are you sure the original hive was queenless or maybe a virgin queen? How long have you had them combined?
I always put my empty drawn comb over the brood. Not sure it really makes a difference, I think mostly just opinion. Maybe a locale thing. Most folks I know place it above the brood.
It is true in nature in a natural cavity they work from top to bottom. But the boxes are certainly easier to check if you configure from bottom to top.
Thanks for the posts. Either way at this time of the year it looks like the Bee's will be Bee's and I should set them up and let them B. :-D