I had a colony with 2 10 frame deeps - brood below, QX, then honey super on top. Honey super almost fully capped (60-70% all frames) but I was going away for a while, so I gave them an empty super with 10 frames of foundation between the brood and honey. When I came back to do an inspection 2 weeks later I was thinking I would be able to take the top super off, as it was almost full the previous time.
Instead, when I inspected the top honey super the frames were less capped than they were previously - only one harvestable frame and the rest were all 50% capped or so. I was in a hurry so I didn't inspect the new lower super or the brood but the hive was very busy around the entrance and a lot of bees. Great flow at the moment so a bit confused about why their stores were going down - could they have been consuming honey to draw the new foundation out, or were they moving honey down to the new super for some reason?
Cheers
Phil
You want us to guess while you could have taken a look? OK, I'll guess. Maybe there was brood in the top deep and they didn't want a void above them. They could have done both, pulled some down and placed some from foraging.
Bees are always moving their resources around as needed. As mentioned, they probably did not like having no food directly over the brood.
Jim
Guess: they got robbed.
Quote from: Acebird on October 19, 2016, 08:29:48 AM
You want us to guess while you could have taken a look? OK, I'll guess. Maybe there was brood in the top deep and they didn't want a void above them. They could have done both, pulled some down and placed some from foraging.
I know I could have taken a look but as stated in the post I was in a real rush so literally just popped the top to see if I could place a clearer board or not. I also mentioned there's a QX on the hive so no brood up top!
I was just interested to see if other people had experienced the same thing - I have heard of under-supering, but if they're just going to shift honey because they don't like the void then what is the point?
Quote from: PhilK on October 19, 2016, 07:38:16 PM
Quote from: Acebird on October 19, 2016, 08:29:48 AM
Maybe there was brood in the top deep
I also mentioned there's a QX on the hive so no brood up top!
Top deep, still under the QX but too close to the brood to put in an empty super. If the brood was in the bottom deep with a good honey cap in the top deep I don't believe the bees would be moving honey. They would just place the foraged nectar in the empty super you put there.
When you are doing the looking or not doing the looking and then ask a forum what are the possibilities there could be many. My experience can be different than your experience because of location which is why we say try to get local help. That help will be guessing too if they did not look into the hive.
Don't get me wrong. I like to manage the hive from the outside but I realize when I do this there is a lot of guessing going on.