In a quandary what to do about my hive, please advise?

[ziffabeek]

Hello all!

I haven't posted in a while because it's been a busy summer.  I work for a large woodworking convention that was held in August, so I've been nose to the grindstone for a while.  The bees seem to have weathered the summer well, but now I'm in a quandary.

I have a 2 deep hive.  We harvested a medium in July and I replaced the medium with an empty afterwards.  Pretty much neglected the bees after that, but they seemed to do ok. 

I fed some in September and then again some in October.  They ate it up, even thought they were flying and bringing in pollen and stuff.  When I went in in early October, they had about 1/2 the medium filled, good looking brood in the top deep and the bottom deep was empty, except for about a 2 inch strip of capped honey at the top of each frame.  I called my mentor and he said to leave it and check back in November and most likely the bees would have totally emptied it and I could remove it for winter.

Well, I just went in today (we've had a spectacular fall here in Atlanta and it was 65-70 degrees and sunny today and the bees are still bringing in pollen).  The medium is packed full of honey.  The top deep has at least 6 frames full of capped honey.  The brood frame I pulled had some capped brood and some empty cells, I didn't pull more than that because they have everything super-glued. But everybody looked healthy and happy and it all looked clean and tidy so that's all good.  All the frames are covered with bees. 

Then I got into the bottom deep, and the 2 inches of capped honey is still there, and it looks like they are filling the frames with more nectar!  The bottoms of all the frames are still empty, and I did see some SHB in them. The parts of the frames that have honey and nectar have bees covering them, but the empty cells do not have bees on them.

I don't know what to do.  Should I pull the bottom deep and store the honey for spring?  Should I just leave them and let them do what they will?  Should I pull the bottom deep, take a frame of honey from the medium and see if they transfer the honey from the deep to the medium?  Any advise is really welcome! 

On a side note, I have  2 very different looking strains of bees in this hive.  there are larger yellow/golden ones and then right next to them are these tiny black ones.  Any idea what strains they are?  They were all really sweet today, much better than the last time I got into them.

Thanks in advance!!

love,

ziffa/liz

[Kathyp]

you probably need to reduce space, so you have a couple of choices.  one is to pull the medium off and save it for later feeding.  the other is to pull the lower deep.  which you choose will depend on how much brood you can expect in your area over winter.

if you choose to pull the medium, i'd take a frame or two of brood from the upper deep and move it to the lower.  you don't want that band of honey between your queen and the lower box.  you can take the frames from the lower and put them on either side of the upper brood.

bud1 told me that he had had awesome brood production for this late in the year.  you'll have to evaluate that for your area, but if you don't have, and don't think you'll get, enough bees to populate two deeps, one deep and the medium is the way to go.

[bigbearomaha]

my advice would be to remove the honey from below.   Take the lower box out of the stack if it has no brood in it.

If the lower box still has brood in it compare it to the upper box.  is the upper more brood than the lower?

If so, maybe pull the full honey frames from the upper box and replace them with the brood frames from the lower box.  Leaving them the single deep and the medium of stores.

but that's just me.

Big Bear

[iddee]

""I called my mentor and he said to leave it and check back in November and most likely the bees would have totally emptied it and I could remove it for winter. ""

Since fall and winter are a month late, I would change November to December and do as your mentor said. He didn't know how the weather was going to be, so is advise is a month early, but still good.

[ziffabeek]

Yay! i was hoping you would reply.  I felt bad to call you again in the middle of nowhere and didn't want to impose.

So you think they will still empty it, even tho it looks like they are putting in new nectar?  Do you think I could go ahead and pull it now, because my December is gonna be pretty busy.  I felt like maybe I checked it too early, but when I saw what looked like new nectar I got all giggity.

Thanks Iddee, you know I love you!

love,
ziffa

[iddee]

By Dec. it will be compacted, starting at the top and going down. Where the bottom will be remains to be seen.