I had a hive swarm, caught the swarm, a week ago. they are in a nuc getting ready to be moved into a 10 frame deep tommorrow. Went in the Mother hive today and 2 deeps are literally full of capped and uncapped honey. I wanted to add some empty frames in the middle of the broodnest but what capped brood is left is scatterred across the frames. Amongst the uncapped honey. there were 7-8 hatched queen cells. I thought the first to emerge would tear down the others. I guess i will steal a few frames and add to the swarm hive to give them room. If she does come back, she will have nowhere to lay. I put an undrawn medium in between in hopes they will pull it out and give her at least some where to lay. I dont know. There seemed to be as many drones in there as bees. Man Im lost.......... :buttkick:
It's a pretty common scenerio I think. My bees don't draw comb well without a queen but as soon as she starts laying they will draw then. I built me a homemade extractor so I could extract a few frames so the queen would have a place to lay.
If you have other hives you can swap a frame or two of honey for a frame or two of capped brood. When it hatches she will have a place to lay as long as they don't fill it first.
Once laying they will often move some of the honey to give her more room.
Hang in there brother! The hatched cells you see might have been from the other queen tearing them down. She will generally open them at the base, more so than the ends. If they are Queenless for a while, they will pack the brood nest, but in my experience, they will start to eat and move honey to set her up a place to lay. Drone brood is common this time of year during swarm season. Good luck!
well, I feel a little better, so the top box was 50%-70% capped, the bottom just around the edges like normal on brood frames. The rest was nectar. The Poplars are rocking, so if I understand you you are saying they will find a way to move or eat the nectar to free up room? I hope so. I guess I will just leave the medium in the middle. If they finish capping the top I might spin it to provide me with much needed drawn cells. Good Idea? Thanks for the encouragement. Hopefully she makes it back mated and they cater to her.
provides them a little room
put a honey super on top then they will have a place to move nectar.
one of my rock-en hives had the super mostly, pulled and a quarter of it filling in two days
jay
Don't worry too much, those bees sock away the honey for a reason. You will be amazed how much of that honey goes away once the new queen starts to lay. If you can get just one drawn frame in there you should be good.
JC
give them room and make sure that you have a returned and mated queen. over-storing of honey can be a sign that you don't have a laying queen. the bees have no brood to raise, so they store honey.
put all the brood together, put some empty frames on either side of the brood. you can feed the extra honey back to them later. then watch for signs of your queen within the next week or so.
Thanks yall, Im gonna try and extract a few deep frames that are capped so I can put them in. Hopefully she comes back mated. I should know soon. Thanks again. G