i thought i had a problem with my queen BUT. I just noticed theres a lot of food and everywhere there is not food there is an egg or larva. Is it posible she doesnt have enough room to lay? Should i start feeding or what. swapboxes? top box has only 5 drawn frames.
It sounds like the bees are doing just fine. Ideally every frame in the brood nest should have a large semicircle of brood in various stages, (eggs, larvae, capped and eventually empty cells), surrounded by some pollen, nectar and honey. If you have empty frames and drawn comb in the top hive box the bees have plenty of room to go up, which they like to do. Don't swap boxes and only add additional frames or hive boxes when the current space is about 3/4 full.
Joanne
90% is food. and i have 5 empty frames on top box. bottom is mostly food to. weird
I would say it's time to open the brood nest! Move one (or more) of your empty combed out frames from above down to the middle of the brood nest. Give the queen a place to lay and stop feeding.
Sounds honey bound!
Quote from: sc-bee on July 15, 2011, 02:33:08 AM
Sounds honey bound!
+1Go do a search on how to remedy this
M Bush has it on his page also
Good luck
Tommyt
you may have empty frames in the top box, but if there is honey between those frames and the queen, she will probably not cross it to lay. put the empty frames on either side of the current brood nest and move honey frames to the top box.
for this reason, i prefer to add new brood boxes to the bottom and not the top. if you are going to give space for laying at the top, pull some brood up into that box and put empty frames below those you have pulled up.
A hive will build comb only underfoot, if there isn't enough bees to occupy a give space they won't build comb there.
The outside frames are almost always storage frames, move those frame outward, or upward, and replace with undrawn frames.
The bees will move off of stores but not off of brood.
Manipulating the frames allows the bees occupy frames they wouldn't otherwise occupy and will then draw out the foundation.
This gives the queen more room for rearing brood and the foragers more room for storing and processing honey.
i have to many undrawn frames on top box. i stopped feeding a long time ago. should I start feeding again to get them drawing? ive moved them around before to get them to start but nothing is happning.
You should only start feeding if you are in a dearth and they are running low on stores. Otherwise, do not feed or they will become honeybound which sounds like your problem to begin with. Like the others have stated. The bees will draw comb as they need it. If there are not enough bees to cover the comb they will not build it. The only way to increase your number of bees is by giving the queen more room to lay. You can do that by moving the honey/pollen frames out and up. Move comb down and in to the brood nest. Feeding will only cause them to fill possible brood cells with honey!
I used to think feeding would lead to comb building. After the flow that is not necessarily so! As Brain says they will only draw what they need for the population of the bees they have to support. Then as you feed they begin to backfill brood area which takes up the space the queen needs to lay.
In my area this time of year, you only feed if stores are low far survival or you get a backfilled brood chamber and I may still get a swarm due to the congestion.
If you move any frames remove some honeybound frames and put the foundation right against the brood where the bees will have to cluster over it, as Brian has instructed.
Brian is a wealth of knowledge ---- I learn so much from his post :yippiechick:
give them some empty frames around the brood. if they don't have the numbers to do something with that top box, they will ignore it. if they need the space for the queen to lay, they will build out the empty frames. fix your brood area and then be patient.
Quote from: kathyp on July 16, 2011, 12:23:24 AM
fix your brood area and then be patient.
Good advice. Don't feed unless there is a lack of stores.
I am having the same problem (see my post). I was feeding cutout colonies thinking they would draw out more frames, but they mostly just filled the existing comb with syrup and honey. They didn't draw out some of the frames at all and are now honey bound. And, to make things worse, I don't have any more deep frames that are drawn out. I think I am going to extract some of the frames in the hive and put them back in once they are cleaned up.