Honey Bound?

[Straycat]

OK, I did my second inspection the other day and I noticed something.  The bees are using frames 1-5 with little to nothing in frames 6-10.  Capped brood is mostly in frames 1-3  along with a little sugar water.  Frames 4-5 have alot of capped sugar water.

My question is this, I have heard the term Honey bound and was wondering if this is possible for these frames of honey to be stopping the queen from using frames 6-10?  I was thinking I should take a couple of the undrawn frames and put them on the other side of frame #1.

Let me know if this is a good idea.

thanks

Straycat

[iddee]

A very good idea.

[Finski]

OK, I did my second inspection the other day and I noticed something. 

The bees are using frames 1-5 with little to nothing in frames 6-10. 

The colony is small.
It occupies more frames  when new bees emerge.

Capped brood is mostly in frames 1-3  along with a little sugar water. 

It is normal to 5 frame colony.

Frames 4-5 have alot of capped sugar water.

Those frames are useless to the colony and retsrict the colony growth.

My question is this, I have heard the term Honey bound and was wondering if this is possible for these frames of honey to be stopping the queen from using frames 6-10?  I was thinking I should take a couple of the undrawn frames and put them on the other side of frame #1.

Let me know if this is a good idea.

thanks

Straycat

So, the colony occupie half of the box. When it gets more bees, it move away capped sugar amd draw the rest foundations. By moving the frames you cannot help them.

It would help if you mind to put there a extra movable wall, then one capped food frare, the brood frames and the one foundation. 

When did you started the colony?

[Straycat]

The package was installed 2 weeks ago Finski.  I will give it another week and see what they do with the empty frames. 

You are right in that as the population of bees grows they will cover more of the frames.  I just need to give them more time for the new bees to emerge.

thanks

Straycat

[Finski]

.
The brood cycle is 3 weeks. You see only fewer bees after the third week. 2 weeks on this you see lots of emerged bees. First they substitute the lost beesand then the coony grows.

It takes 6 weeks to eggs to became foragers.

[Brian D. Bray]

Bees only work what is underfoot.  An area of foundation must have bees occupying that space before they will draw comb there.  The same is true for brood rearing, bees will only rear brood in combs covered by bees.  Honey on the other hand doesn't require constant attention as does comb building or brood rearing and bees will readily move off of capped honey combs.

I a 3 lb package of bees was installed, for them to occupy 5 frames is about right.  Since bees will move off of the capped comb, move that one place over and replace it with a frame of foundation, the bees will then begin drawing comb on that frames as it is now underfoot of the bees and the queen will also begin laying eggs in the combs or even on the foundation forcing the bees to draw comb where she lays eggs. 

Increasing the size of the hive by moving capped honey frames away from the cluster of bees and replacing them with frames of foundation is one way to speed up the growth of the hive. 

Remember bees will only work an area of the hive that is occupied by the the bees, most langstroth hives allow for a 2 deep depth of bees on each side of a frame due to the width of the end bars.  Reducing the width of the end bar to 1 1/4 inces reduces the space between frames to a single bee depth and increases the number of frames in a hive by 1.  Bees will actually expand faster, hive grow multiply, when using narrower frame ends due to this charateristic of bees.