Howdy
I have another supering question some say don't use a queen excluder which makes sense but now i added the second brood chamber and they have drawn all of it except maybe four frames which are probaly drawn out by now and the queen is laying in it. Ok should i place a super on now or wait till it is all drawn out and will the queen go and lay in it. I want to try to get some cut comb honey or this kind of honey use a excluder since the rain my hives have been working real hard pollen in the morning and then i guess nectar in the afternoon they can barely make it back to the hive so what should i do.
TOM
It is advisable to let the queen have as much room as she needs to do her duty, even if it takes 3 or even for boxes. Using boxes of all the same size does away with the quandry of what to do with brood cells from a super that won't fit ina deep.
I use 4 mediums as my standard brood chamber, I use mediums every where. Uniformity makes for ease of hive management.
Hello
I am running two deeps on my big hive and they seem to not hang out as much on the front now as they did at first. But now i am sure they have drawn all of the frames out in that and is ready for a super they are stoing honey. Now if i wanted to split this hive could i do so that would give me four hives instead of three.
Tom
You can split if you want to, however, the best times to split are either earlier in the year (April or May) or in conjunction with honey harvest. In the latter case splitting the hive reduces the overly large quantity of bees in a hive into 2 hives and winter the splits over.
In July it would be best to concentrate on harvesting what honey can be produced during the remainder of the summer and get it stronger for a fall split.
Super it and let it grow.
Fall splits,... this is a new idea to me. I had a swarm with a clipped queen that I split, supered for winter and overwintered. I combined the hives this spring as they were weak & let the nature decide. Each hive had from June 6 on to build for winter. So whats up with fall splits? I thought the queen would reduce rearing as a matter of course as the days shortened. A split would result in a small hive,... 30,000 bees, reducing for winter... I spose as I think about it. What is the size of a hive in November?
If you have a large hive splitting the hive will reduce the number of bees that need to over winter in each. The brood production is greatly decreased during cold weather but doesn't necessailly stop all together. If sufficient stores are divided out to the splits both will winter well and be in good shape for the early spring flows.
I could go into more detail but that's the jist of it--hope it answers your question.