reclaiming a super that is likely full of brood

tandemrx · April 07, 2011, 01:09:24 PM

I went into winter with my backyard hive in a 2-deep and 1-super set up. The super-full of honey was left to give them adequate stores for winter. Happily the hive has survived the winter and seems quite active although it has been a bit too cold to do an inspection to date.

So, I would like to get back to a 2-deep configuration for this hive, but because when they went into winter they were quite firmly established in the upper deep and in the super I suspect that when I open the hive I will have a substantial amount of brood in this super (and if I guess right they will be neglecting the bottom deep).

Part of me says to just leave them with this 2-deep and 1-super set up for the duration as their living space, but in the end I would prefer just 2-deeps so they don't have that extra space come next winter.

I guess my other option is to make sure my queen is in the deeps and put a queen excluder under the the super and reclaim it when brood is hatched, but wondering if there is another approach I am not thinking of to reclaim this super without losing what I expect to be a substantial amount of brood.

thanks.

VolunteerK9 · April 07, 2011, 01:14:51 PM

My .02 says that they will move down on their own as your spring warms up and reserve the super for stores again. Im quite a bit south of you and we are still have some 30's at nights-some hives are back in the bottom boxes solidly, some are not.

FRAMEshift · April 07, 2011, 01:21:44 PM

K9 is probably right. You won't know what's going on without looking. If the bottom deep is empty, you could just remove it and you would have what you want. An excluder will trap drones unless you have a top entrance.

iddee · April 07, 2011, 04:57:50 PM

Do nothing. When they bring in honey, they will NOT store it below the brood. They will move the queen down and store it above her. When they have a full super of honey, the brood will be in the deeps.

Brian D. Bray · April 10, 2011, 09:55:15 PM

Quote from: iddee on April 07, 2011, 04:57:50 PM
Do nothing. When they bring in honey, they will NOT store it below the brood. They will move the queen down and store it above her. When they have a full super of honey, the brood will be in the deeps.

Ditto.
Bees rebuild their hive the inverse of stores consumption over the winter. Going into winter Italian bees will usually cluster in the lower brood box and eat their way to the top box. In the Spring they begin rearing brood and processing honey and pollen in the top box working their way down to the bottom box as the expanding population forces the bees to move to adjacent or lower frames. Since all of this is drawn comb it is best to super when the lower boxes is 40-50% filled with bees.

asprince · April 10, 2011, 10:54:21 PM

I had several hives with this situation. I took a faster route and shook / brushed each frame clean of bees and reinstalled the super over an excluder. As the brood hatches, they back filled with honey. I extracted those supers last week.

Steve

iddee · April 12, 2011, 10:00:24 AM

ASPRINCE, THAT WILL WORK WHEN THERE IS A FLOW. IN A DEARTH, YOU MAY BE TAKING HONEY NEEDED FOR THE HIVE. IF THEY CAN'T REPLACE IT QUICK ENOUGH, THEY CAN'T RAISE BROOD.

chrissv · April 12, 2011, 03:57:32 PM

Quote from: asprince on April 10, 2011, 10:54:21 PM
As the brood hatches, they back filled with honey.

I had the same problem (overwintered super now has brood), and I put the excluder as mentioned. But I am also feeding 1:1 sugar syrup to encourage brood build-up. What do I do about the resulting super in this case? Obviously they will put the sugar syrup in the super, which renders it unusable for extracting.

How do you reclaim a super like this when you also need to feed sugar syrup?

Thanks - Steven

tandemrx · April 12, 2011, 04:33:28 PM

That is part of my predicament Chrissy

If there is brood in mine (which I still suspect is the case), I may end up putting that super on the bottom (underneath my deeps) with a queen excluder on top of it (assuming I find the queen in one of the deeps or move her there . . . with some hopes they will move left over honey/syrup up into their deeps. That is part of my problem, what "honey" will be left in this super was mainly sugar syrup based from fall feeding.