I am converting from deep brood chambers to all mediums! Right now, I have 8 hives in two deeps for a brood chamber...how do i persuade the bees to leave the deeps and to start laying in a medium? Anyone who has gone through this transition, i'd appreciate your advice. Also, cutting deeps in half with brood intact is not an option since I will be trading them for mediums.
If it were me, I would try to get the queen in a medium, sit it on the bottom, place a queen excluder on top of that and place the deeps with brood on top of that. When the brood has all emerged then I would Take the deeps off and add a medium. Shake/brush bees off the deep's frames into the hive. Then either take the honey for myself or open it up and set it out for robbing so the bees will have it back.
You can put the mediums on top and wait for them to move up. You can cut one frame of open brood and tie it in a medium frame and put the queen that that one frame of open brood above an exluder in the medium above the existing nest. I would be cautious of putting the queen above the exluder with the bees below. They may just raise another queen below instead.
Youc can also wait until spring when they will probably be in the top box and pull the deep off of the bottom.
You can also cut ALL of the brood out of the deeps and tie them in mediums and scrap all the honey from the brood nest (feed it etc.).
It depends on how much of a hurry you are in, how much you want to work and how much you want to disrup the hive.
They all work fine.
Acutallyl I've thought about, but haven't tried, cutting the frame down with the comb in it. :)