A third year 2 deep hive bodies of HSC frames of russians.
2 Supers full of drawn comb from last years harvest added in march as the red buds start to bloom.
As of now there are appx 10 frames in the lower super with capped honey but none in the top super.
Hive bodies are packed with honey. Hive hasn't been fed since last October and no queen excluder used.
Can someone tell me what happened and how to prevent it in the future? Thank's, Brad
Are the frames in the supers lined up, or are they blocking the way.
I am sure you will get better answers than mine but for now I would flip the two supers, or better yet take the full one off. I always take my honey suppers off as soon as they are capped, but then I watch my hives pretty closely. I don't like my wax to get travel stained.
Are you thinking your brood boxes are honey bound w/no place for the queen to lay? I'd pull out a couple of the honey frames in the brood boxes and give the queen some empty frames so she'll have more space to lay in. Save the honey frames for winter feed.
Why did they lay up so much honey in the brood boxes and none in the top super without any supplemental feeding going on? Is that your main question? I am not sure but iddee may be on the right track.
During the winter the bees move up the hive. Unforunately, the queen does not like to move back down and most of the time she has to be forced. I overwinter with one deep and one shallow, so she runs out of room in the shallow and normally moves down herself. You however are not doing that, which is fine, but until you move her down she is not going down. Especially since there is no where to lay eggs. The simplest solution is to flip the supers. If that is not possible, take the top super off and swap the frames. Place the frames from the top super in the bottom and the frames from the bottom in the top. I would take out some of those capped brood frames and either extract it, replace with foundation or drawn comb, and or give to a weak hive. Overall, a high quality problem and one I would not mind having myself!!
Yes all the frames are lined up and normal. I have switched the supers putting the empty below the full. A local long time beek that came over to see my setup said that is why he never runs 2 deeps as they don't need that much room ( 1 deep and a medium is more than enough for are area) and that they fill from the bottom up ( which is exactly what happened). I always thought that the bees started at the top and worked down but as you can see in this case they did just the opposite.
The beek and I ended up doing a split on this hive and adding a new queen to the take away side and I have ordered another queen to replace the old queen in the old side of the split as the beek felt she should of been laying alot better also. Thank's, Brad