During my hive inspections, I was doing a one on one mentoring with my younger brother, I found 2 of the hives had become pollen bound. Having a pollen bound hive makes it much harder for the queen to break free of the blockade and enlarge the brood area of her own volition as with a honeybound hive.
Hive 1 I did a split, I had placed a 5 frame nuc of bees over an 8 frame deep (I don't have a deep, I owed one of my other students a bee hive and he wanted deeps) and once the queen moved from the nuc down into the deep I removed the nuc as a split.
Hive 2 we found to be pollen bound but the queen had managed to break out of the constriction. This hive was on it's second supercedure as the original queen became quite spotty with her brood and the bees replaced her, the second queen never developed beyond laying partial frames of brood. The hive had dwindled to a 3rd of its rior size due to the supercedures. The new queen was laying complete frames of brood, that is no honey or pollen was in the combs, every cell was brood. Medium frames. She had three frames full of brood on each side. Those brood frames were bracketed with frames of mixed honey and pollen. The remaining frames were full of stores. This was in the top box of 3.
In the middle box the bees were busy cleaning out cells and pockets of nectar were helter skelter. Immediately below the brood area of the top box I found a frame of pollen and honey, a full frame of brood (again no honey or pollen on the brood frame, just all brood) and another frame of mixed pollen and honey.
In hive number 3 I found the same thing as in Hive 2 except the queen was blocked (limited) to 2 brood frames bracketed with frames of mixed pollen and honey and only cleaning and nectar processing in the middle box. This hive had superceded its queen because I had gone back to the same hive too many times for brood frames while nursing hive 1 back from a winter cluster of a handful of bees. But being limited to only 2 brood frames she could not rear enough brood to develop beyond the point of a pollen bound 2 pound package.
The solution for both hives was the same action. I moved the mixed pollen/honey frames outward and pulled prepped comb from the lower box to place on each side of the brood frames. The storage frames were moved to the outsides of the lower box. In hive 2 I was able to enlarge the available brood space by both sides of 4 fully drawn frames due to the brood area in 2 boxes. In hive 3 I was limited to expanding the brood chamber by both sides of 2 fully drawn frames.
The projection of the actions taken.
In hive 1 it will get moved to its new owner and the nuc split off of it will be developed into 3 5 frame boxes for overwintering. The why of that I will explain later if so requested.
At the time of the next inspection Hive 2 should have 5 full frames of brood in the top box with the other 3 frames stores, and the middle box will have 3 frames of brood with 4-5 frames of stores and both boxes should be completely full of bees with some stores being placed in the bottom box.
Upon the next inspection of hive 2 it should be at or slightly ahead of where hive 2 was this visit.
My expectation is:
That all three hives will go into the winter with good sized clusters and 3 full boxes of stores. I will not get a honey crop this year due to the extensive supercedure that occurred.
Come Spring Hive one will have a smaller cluster but will build faster, due to its limited space, than the either hive 2 or 3. As counter intuitive as that idea is, space is very critical to hive development, how it is used and manipulated. If past experience is any guage, Hive 1 will build to 3 full 8 frame medium boxes, before hives 2 and 3 do next Spring.
Now I want you to read my inspection, the findings and the actions taken, and tell me why you think my expectations are fact or fiction.