Possibly Honey Bound

[AllieBaxterLubbs]

My beekeeping partner and I added a second deep brood box to our Langstroth about a month ago when our first brood box was about 80% drawn out/full of brood. We went out of town for 3 weeks and were able to peek in them today. Seems like there was a heavy nectar flow right after we added the second box and now it is almost entirely filled with capped nectar. I saw a few larvae on one or two of the frames but not much. I didn't pull all the frames because I was doing it alone and didn't want to spend a bunch of time disturbing them, but from what I saw I would guess it is 90% nectar and 10% brood. Every frame has been drawn out and is full/in the process of being filled.

At first I thought I should add the honey super but after reading a few things about hives becoming honey bound and the possibility of swarming if the queen doesn't have a place to lay eggs, I am not sure that's the best move. Any advice? I don't have another brood box to add but I could get one, or I could get some empty frames to replace some of the nectar filled ones in the hopes that the queen will use them to lay eggs. Will they empty some of the cells for eggs or are they permanently used for nectar now?

For now I am planning to leave them alone until I have a clear plan but would like to have a course of action to take in the next week. I'm going to do some online research and look in the books I have but any advice or experiences you can offer are appreciated. Thank you!

[divemaster1963]

Remove the frames that are 90-95% capped and put them in the freezer till your ready to extract them. Put a empty frame or two in the middle and then the ones with brood next. Face the brood inward towards the empty frames in the middle. Do this as soon as possible. They will swarm on you if they is NP place for her to lay. Check for swarm cells will doing this in the lower box. Split if you have the boxes or destroy them to slow them till you can get boxes.

John

[AllieBaxterLubbs]

Thanks John!

[cao]

from what I saw I would guess it is 90% nectar and 10% brood. 

Was that in the top box or the bottom?  If it was the bottom box then the are definitely honey bound. If it is in the top box then adding a super would help.  That would give them space to move/store the nectar and allow them to expand the broodnest more in the second box.  It would also help to add a couple of frames as divemaster said. 

Will they empty some of the cells for eggs or are they permanently used for nectar now?

If the cells have uncapped nectar, the bees can move it around the hive.  If it is capped honey, it usually is there for long term storage for winter.

[AllieBaxterLubbs]

Thanks both of you. I decided not to hesitate in doing something because it seemed like no matter what they needed space ASAP. I talked to a few beekeeper friends on the phone and ended up getting another deep where I moved all the frames that were just nectar and replaced them with empty frames. I left the few frames (3) that had any amount of brood in them (each was probably less than 25%) So now there's a top brood box with empty frames interspersed with nectar filled frames, a middle box with empty frames and some brood/nectar in the center, and the bottom brood box which I looked in and is still doing well, probably 80%-85% brood. Hopefully this helps.

[sc-bee]

 Do all the above and I would also move a few brood frames to the top deep to break the honey ceiling  if I feared they were going to swarm (IMHO). Then add the next box (super). Are you running an excluder? Hope not