can't get girls to draw out supers

forrestcav · April 28, 2012, 11:58:44 PM

kinda self explanitory. beginning of april I put my first super on my overwintered hive. Since then my girls have yet to draw out the new foundation. they are full then willing to fill frame after frame of brood with honey. I have pulled two frames on uncapped and replaced it with foundation that they drew out and the queen filled. then today more honey in the brood boxes. Finally I took and sprayed the super foundation with 1:1 syrup in hopes it would draw them up. I also spoke to someone who told me to put my syrup feeder back on to draw them up.
Any other ideas? Wife says no honey, we have barbecue bees.

duck · April 29, 2012, 12:04:09 AM

draw them up with brood, remove the excluder?

kingbee · April 29, 2012, 12:04:31 AM

those last two ideas will work as long as the bees are willing to be as busy as bees

forrestcav · April 29, 2012, 12:16:33 AM

no excluder and my honey supers are shallows

Kathyp · April 29, 2012, 12:42:23 AM

they draw them out when there is a good flow and they need the room to store. what's your flow like now?

BlueBee · April 29, 2012, 01:05:19 AM

Sounds like time to barbeque to me :-D

Normally as full frames of brood hatch there are simply so many bees that they can't possibly all fit in the bottom box so they have to move up (and start combing). This is especially so with overwintered bees. In your case, maybe your queen isn't as good as she should be? If she were laying 1500 to 2000 eggs a day as she should be, it would only take 3 days to fill a deep frame. They should be filling comb with eggs faster than the workers can fill them with nectar.

Seems to me in your case, your bees are bringing in nectar at a rate faster than the queen is laying and that is going to result in an ever deceasing colony size instead of increasing. Sounds like a good calculus problem for some high schoolers out there.

You could try switching from a bottom entrance to a top entrance and see if that entices them to move up toward the entrance (and your supers). If that doesn't work, I would try requeening. I assume your supers are using wax foundation? If it's plastic, I would coat with wax, that always helps my bees.

AndrewT · April 29, 2012, 11:08:10 AM

In all my years keeping bees and producing comb honey, Forrest, that has been one of my biggest frustrations. Those who do extracted honey just put on frames of drawn comb and the bees get right into them, but for the comb honey producer, or the liquid honey guy with no drawn comb, you have to start out with foundation. You have a good hive, with lots of bees, and you put on an empty shallow on top, wait a week and look in to find the brood nest full of honey and queen cells and no bees or honey in the shallow. I tried dripping honey on the shallow frames and that didn't work. One season, I took several shallow frames and cut the cappings off and let as much honey drip out as I could get, then let the bees rob out the rest so that I could have a shallow frame of drawn comb to put on each hive for next year. That worked pretty well, and I did that until I learned how to cut my hives down to one deep super, really loaded with bees, and then put on the shallows for comb honey.

I think that's why the big producers don't mess with comb honey much anymore, because it generally takes more time, attention, and labor just to get the bees to make good comb honey, let alone the trouble to cut and package it.

duck · April 29, 2012, 12:07:50 PM

i would put some medium or shallow undrawn frames down in the bottom deep. slap em right in the brood nest. then when they lay and cap it, move those up to the super. that will get em up there for sure. it may take a little time, but thats all you got..

forrestcav · April 29, 2012, 01:10:09 PM

I agree its frustrating and yes its all foundation. they draw brood foundation out quick. Maybe she has slowed some, this is her second year and I do have two deep brood boxes for her to fill. I considered putting my shallow box between my two brood boxes to try to get them to draw out. I hated to have to put brood in my supers, but if it'll make them draw it, i'm game. As for superceding the queen, that a task I have yet to try.
I was in them saturday, so tuesday i'll open it back up and see. if not change, then i'll pull deep honey frames and checker board with shallow foundation. anybody have any thoughts on putting the whole honey super between then two brood boxes? Or would be too much hassle?

Kathyp · April 29, 2012, 01:39:07 PM

i don't think it's a hassle. you will almost certainly get brood in there. i can't see that that's a big deal. when you move the box back to the top, the brood will hatch and you are left with drawn comb for them to store in. it's only a problem if you were going to do cut comb.

again, no flow=no comb. if they don't need it, they don't draw it or store in it.

cdanderson · April 29, 2012, 02:24:18 PM

I agree it depends on what type of flow you are having and how full those bottom deeps are.

duck · April 29, 2012, 06:25:17 PM

you want them to draw? give them sugar syrup for ink! I got about two weeks +/- a week till the flow really gets going here. Im going through 200lbs of sugar a week. I force em to draw it. Super get drawn this week for sure. I got 3 gallon buckets with holes punched in it in front of every hive I got. Most of the bees Ive caught in big swarms will draw four to five deeps frames a week with the amount of syrup available to them. DO IT.

kingbee · April 29, 2012, 06:34:01 PM

Bees are like welfare recipients. They don't work unless they need to work. Its sort of like the Field of Dreams movie, give them a reason and they will build it.

robthir · April 29, 2012, 07:38:51 PM

I'm quite new at this, starting with established hives and expecting a nuc at the end of next month. The weather has been really weird(so I'm feeding, plus I moved these hives over 30 miles a month ago), there was a good brood pattern in the brood chamber and honey in the top super, so I put a super in between two other supers. Today I see bees all over the new super, but nothing else, no nectar, no honey, just bees. I'm considering removing the excluder or slowing down the feed, though everyone says to feed until they won't take anymore. I also noticed today that the brood chamber has less brood and more honey. What is that about? I realize that I'm doing this a bit backward, but any ideas would be appreciated. Next week, if I get a moment, I'm going to invite my mentor over for tea.

Kathyp · April 29, 2012, 07:49:39 PM

you are feeding with honey supers on? and you might want to get rid of the excluders. they tend to slow things down.

if you are feeding with the honey supers on and they are storing, you are not getting honey you are getting stored syrup.

duck · April 29, 2012, 11:01:55 PM

right syrup is not honey. BUT the point is to make them draw comb because they want to put that stuff somewhere!

forrestcav · April 29, 2012, 11:52:35 PM

alright everyboby here is my plan. feel free to chime in. tuesday weather permitting I am going to put my super between the two brood boxes. I not doing cut comb, just extracting. I figure once they draw it out and start brood i can move it back on top. hopefully forcing them up and storing there instead of the brood boxes.
I'm also thinking of the two nucs I got, the last one is quite strong. They came with 5 frames and bees and brood on three with honey on the other two. I figure when I get ready for another box i'll give them a super to draw out. maybe I can get a frame of honey and comb from them too.

sterling · April 30, 2012, 01:22:38 PM

Forrest do you live in Hillsborro TN that is south of Nashville? There has been a flow going on in that area for over a month. I have hives with two deeps and some with one deep and mediums it seems harder to me to get the hives with two deeps to draw comb above the deeps then the ones with one deep and mediums. You can bring up some drawn frames out of the medium box when you add a medium super.
One suggestion, add a deep and alternate some drawn deep frames in the third deep. Maybe they will fill both up. I did that last year with a couple hives and it worked pretty good. then split the hives after the flow.

forrestcav · May 01, 2012, 12:18:07 AM

I'm in the real Hillsboro, 70 mi south of Nashville. I have two deep brood boxes and shallow honey supers. Yes we've had a flow going on for a while now. Hence my frustration. Thats why i'm thinking to put the super between brood boxes, so they have to go between the two broods. then once it's drawn out move it back up.

buzzbee · May 01, 2012, 07:55:47 AM

How many bees are in these boxes?You need a large number of foragers to gather honey. If They are playing catch up to build colony size,there may be mostly nurse bees and not enough foragers.
Did you stimulate early brood rearing with pollen patties in March? The overwintered colony often needs an early boost to have adequate numbers for foraging when a flow is on.