Top entrances - brood nest on top, empty comb on bottom

[tjc1]

I think he means, would they backfill the brood nest first while there was an empty box above the brood nest.

[Acebird]

Empty box?  Or empty drawn comb?  I assume when he said they went up and put brood in it, it is not empty anymore.  If they were being fed they will put it were ever they can.  It happened to me last year when I put an extracted box on top of the hive late in fall.  I just wanted them to clean it out and get the last bit of honey for the winter.  They went up, queen laid a few eggs and they never went back down.  I keep finding more ways to wipe out a hive.

[Duane]

They can't move the honey if the honey is 40 degrees. It doesn't matter what the air temperature is.   No different than trying to feed them syrup at 40 degrees.   

For some reason I never realized that.  I should have.  We had some 50 degree days, but might have taken awhile for the honey away from the cluster to get up to that.

They were in the bottom box, used up their honey, moved into the top box laying brood with empty comb in the bottom.  I was asking if they would fill the brood nest they were currently in when there was more space elsewhere. 

The question is, come next August and I see a similar thing (provided the rest of my bees don't die!), what should I do?

[Acebird]

This situation should only occur if you have a dearth long enough that the bees cannot collect a surplus.  In this case put an empty box above and feed like crazy.  They won't put honey or syrup below the nest if there is space above.  The decision to remove the bottom box is iffy.  I would resist that.

[Duane]

Looking over the thread again, I think the confusion was over timing of feeding.  I didn't start feeding any until I saw a problem.  One was empty comb below them, and the other had honey below them.  I see what you mean if I had started feeding while they were in the bottom box, they might have filled it and moved up for more room.  But they already had before I fed.

[Duane]

I was thinking about horizontal hives, where bees are supposed to move from one end to the other.  Sometimes it works out.  Sometimes not.  So here, I had honey directly above them [that is in the second box that died after taking honey from the first box that died], and they still died.  If I had a horizontal hive, and they still died, I would expect someone to say that's why, I need to have vertical hives.  But maybe sometimes, things happen and it has nothing to do with hive configuration.

Trying to make sense of all this, I start looking back at the history of my bees.  I realize this is an inadequate sample size and so cannot make a conclusion, but still it is interesting thinking about.  I bought two nucs.  One is still alive, I tried to split it but it never worked.  Maybe original queen, maybe it swarmed and I didn't know it.  The other nuc, I had split off a couple of frames the first year, and then that split started raising queen cells this year.  I then split them up.  Here's what's interesting.  The original nuc and the first split have died.  The three second splits are all still alive.  Maybe a random occurrence given so few, but maybe the southern queens are not so adapted to winters and after two generations of mating with local drones they are?

[Acebird]

Honey bees are extremely adaptable.  They can deal with any cavity you give them or they can find on there own.  If you want the most help stick with a Lang hive because that is what most people have and it is the industry standard in this country.

[Michael Bush]

>I was thinking about horizontal hives, where bees are supposed to move from one end to the other.  Sometimes it works out.  Sometimes not.

Same with vertical hives... sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't.  Sometimes there is a lot of honey that isn't in contact with the bees and they starve with honey in the hive.