Brood Problem?

[jsflagg]

Hi everyone,

I started two hives this year. I am using two deep hive bodies for brood chambers and then honey supers on top of the two brood chambers.  Well my question comes from today's inspection.  I added another super to my first hive as everything looked well and went no further as far as inspecting.  However, I have not done an in depth inspection on my 2nd hive in awhile, so I did so today.  I noticed that there is not much laying activity in the bottom chamber on the 1st hive.  If using a two brood chamber set up like this how many frames should be fairly full of brood?  I did notice some laying activity in the top.  I cut my inspection short because the bees were getting aggravated and I got stung by a bee that i didn't see on my smoker, I squished her and she stung me, my bad :(.  Should the queen keep the majority of the 20 frames full or does 
it rotate with some full and some not so full?  Any suggestions would be great.

Thanks,

Joseph

[Shizzell]

Hi Joseph, welcome to beekeeping.
It always depends on how your queen likes to run the castle. I have a couple of hives that run 3 brood chambers high, and some that only run 1. The queen depends on what she is going to lay. I would expect 4-5 frames in each chamber full of brood about 90%.

With your problem, maybe you don't have a queen? Were there eggs? If there were eggs - then yes you have a queen. Otherwise, if you don't see eggs after all the brood hatches, i would consider getting a new queen, or putting in a frame or two of eggs. That may be why the bees are anxious and annoyed so much.

Jake

[jsflagg]

I did see some eggs in the top brood chamber.  I think I will wait a week and look in the top chamber again and see what it looks like.