Hey all. I need options. let me give you my situation. Got my package last year, over wintered fine in two deeps, warm winter and low store come spring. I open fed till bloom started (early). Checked upper box two weeks ago, had uncapped nectar, one week ago had capped honey, set shallow super. I checked today, few bees on shallow but no drawing seen. Now the possible problem, every cell in the top box is filled with mostly uncapped, some capped honey. I'm afraid I created a swarming situation. I was really hoping for a good honey crop this year(my first). So what are my options? I don't have any empty drawn comb or I would replace it with that, just foundation. I do have a nuc coming hopefully next week, pull the full frames and replace with foundation and give to new nuc?
Or just prepare for a swarm and get a trap built? No I didn't see any queen cells when I pulled frames on the top box, didn't get into bottom box.
Sounds like you need to look in the bottom box, they are more than likely moving towards the bottom and you will find the brood nest below.
Ya, what does the brood look like. Bee always store honey over brood. With new undrawn frames, never use a queen excluder if you did. You can use it after you have drawn comb.
when I looked down into the top of the box, most of the residents seems to be below. So do you think i'll be ok? i don't want them honey bound and forcing a swarm. Do you think they'll consime the honey in the top and replace it with brood?
on an up side, I went ahead and banged out a swarm trap using robo's web site. I figure to put a frame of foudation and four empty frames with some LGO. Now I need info on placement of said box.
AllenF: all my deeps are drawn comb on them. At the moment only my shallow supers are undrawn. I didn't use an excluder as I had read that the queen using won't go above capped honey usually and my top deep contains capped honey across the top of all frames.
Honey across the tops of the brood frames is a good thing. Honey above brood. The main question is are they honey bound or is there still brood area open. Give there is room for brood, and nectar coming in, they will move up. Super frames have foundation?
yes super frames have foundation. So they'll have to draw it out. This is my first year to attempt to gather honey. Last year I just left them put up stores and rear brood.
In my opinion what i would do is i would take all that honey and extract it out of the honey super into a bucket this is sugar honey im guessing, you could feed this back in fall. Once all those frames are extracted i would checker them with frames of undrawn foundation 1 drawn 1 undrawn. This will allow you to have two honey supers with drawn and undrawn frames this is a good way to have room for coming nectar and at the same time you are releaving conjestion in the brood chamber and they are drawing out the foundation as the nectar is coming in. Make sure before you do this that there is nectar coming in or there is amble honey in the deeps below so if you get a few days of bad weather u dont starve them. Chris
I would put a super on, check it n a couple weeks. If she's got enough room then she won't swarm. I added supers to my hives this weekend simply because I began to worry about swarming, and it is really early for us.
well i had put a super on week ago tomorrow. I checked it today that's when i noticed the full deep brood box. I also knocked together a swarm box, added five frames, three with full of partial foundation and added some LGO. Took out about 100 yards and placed on topof a post about 6 foot up facing south. Just in case.
Hey Joe!
If you want honey I would take the frames of "sugar honey" out if it's in the super. If you have the uncapped and so on in the deeps I would make sure I wasn't feeding 2 weeks ago. They're not going to eat the honey unless they need to. Did you get into the nest (Brood area)? My hives have been fairly packed with bees for a month now, and I put a second deep on all established hives.
We're in the middle of the main flow now. I've been out scouting the woods, and the Winter Honeysuckle is being worked. If they need the space, they'll build it. If you have them building queen cells, they've already got swarming in mind. If not, I would add space, split, or shakedown. You should ask your mentor.
Don't just put up one trap, put up a few more, at different distances. You have one at 300 ft, 1/4 mile (1320 ft, 400m) is elbow room, but nature doesn't put hollow logs in at optimum distances, so the bees will shop around. Bjornbee submits placing the traps 10 or more feet in a tree, which is higher than I can reach up. I don't really have enough data gathered to verify or challenge his statement, but so far the one swarm I trapped was at 10 ft, 6 in.
Hey Riess, One was all the scrap wood I had handy at the time. I need to drag out some scrapp OSB I have and start cutting it. I did not get into the bottom brood box to see if cells were being built my hive is two deep brood boxes anyhow. . Maybe tomorrow when I get home from work. i wasn't expecting such an early flow or I would have put my super on two weeks ago. Everybody prayer to the bee gods I didn't mess up.
As for the ten foot mark, I guess I need to pick up rope and get the extention ladder out.
I haven't been really in contact with my "mentor" since last fall, so i've been kinda winging it.
I ran out of frames a week ago, and have been cutting 1 x 2's to make top bars from. I'm not sure if I made the design of my traps intentionally, but 4 of them, and one cut down to 1.25" which I tie the comb fits just right with a little room for getting them back out.
You might go down to construction sites or where they're building a house and ask the guys if you can go through their throwaways. Swarm traps only have to be big enough, and dry to satisfy bees. A little comb and LGO simply draws them in, verifies the cavity is good enough to make a colony, and gets them all excited.
I made the trap out of the Dcoates 5 frame nuc box design (http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,27006.0.html) from 3/8" (9 mm) plywood. It turns out the width I chose was 7.5" (190 mm)and would fit the 5 honey bars just right on paper. With one brood bar, 1.25" wide (32 mm) it gives me .25in (6 mm) slop and the flexibility of the sides of the box to work with when wrestling the bars and bees out.
When the time comes to get the colony out of the traps I'll cut the combs off the bars and fit them in frames, unless I decide to build a 19" (482 mm) wide TBH. I'm smitten with the demeanor of the bees now that I have my 17" (432 mm) wide TBH populated.
Anyway, don't let this stuff intimidate you. People have been doing this with baskets, clay jars, hollow logs, cow poop, and straw for thousands of years. The bees haven't changed, the beekeepers did. If they're agonna swarm, they will do it without your permission. Bee"keeping" is close to Game"keeping." There are no Beeherds.
What seems to work for me is to find which of the 2 deeps has the most brood that is capped. Move that to the bottom. In the upper deep make sure those center frames are available for the queen to move up and lay in. After the brood that is capped in the lower box has hatched move that box to the upper position of the 2 deeps. The queen will have space to lay there. The best option is to keep the 2 center frames of the upper deep open -i.e. just foundation or unfilled comb and then they wont think they are getting overcrowded.
I ended up removing two frames of uncapped honey just either side of the center and added foundation. Maybe that'll help.I'll freeze that and add it to my nuc i'm expecting. I expected to see more activity in the super I placed.