Honey in Brood Deep - What To Do?

[Two Bees]

One of my second year hives swarmed a couple of times in early April.  The hive consists of two deeps and two mediums and no queen excluder.  The first medium super is about 80% filled with capped honey and the girls are not interested in the top medium super, having drawn out virtually no foundation.

Today, I removed both medium supers to inspect the brood to see if a new queen has been raised and is laying.  The top deep is slammed with capped honey on 100% of the frames.  I haven't fed this hive since last September so I am assuming that the honey is this year's crop.  But the honey comb caps are dark and sunken.  I did not go to the bottom deep to inspect the brood and larvae because the top deep was so dang heavy.  I bet that deep "super" weighed 80-90 pounds!

The sunken capped honey.......is this a problem?

What should I do with this "brood" deep that is full of honey?

[Kathyp]

if the medium supers are for you, remove some of that capped honey and replace with frames for them to work.

as for the deeps, you need to check for brood.  sometimes queenless hives store lots of honey since they have no brood to raise.  take the honey frames out if you have to just to reduce the weight.  put them in another box.

if you find that you do have a queen and your brood area is reduced, take some of those deep frames of honey and freeze them for feeding back later.  replace frames with foundation or strips so that the queen has more room to lay.

[iddee]

Intermingle the two mediums . "checkerboard" 1 full, one empty, all the way across both boxes. Remove the upper deep and extract. 4 plus gallons of honey should bring enough to buy a lot of bee stuff. Replace the deep back where it was and checkerboard it the same as the mediums. The queen will fill both of them with brood.

[Two Bees]

So you think the honey in the second brood deep is ok even though the caps were sunken and dark?

[doak]

Bee traffic and time give the capping that appearance. the honey should be fine.doak

[iddee]

On second thought, just to be sure, you may ought to extract it, bottle it, and bring it to me. I'll take care of it from there.   :evil:   :-D

[crawfish]

If the top brood box has been treated for mites would it still be ok to take the honey?

[Kathyp]

i would say no. 

i don't extract what i have to take from brood boxes.  i save it by freezing it to feed back to the bees.  my winters are pretty bad, so that may be a difference due to region. 

[iddee]

I don't treat for mites with anything I wouldn't want to eat. So yes, I eat honey from the brood box.

[Two Bees]

Thanks for all of the info.  The only medication that I have done to the hive was was to feed some Fumagilin B in 2:1 syrup last fall.   I would think that that medicated syrup should be gone by now, don't you?

[Gware]

I am in the same position as two bees. My hive swarmed and I have a brood box full of honey. The first brood box does have some laying space as I saw new eggs 2 days ago, so by what everyone says I should extract it. Last fall it turned really dry so should I leave any just in case and last year I treated with Apiguard but not this year would it be ok to eat?

[Two Bees]

What do you think about splitting this hive and creating a new colony? 

This hive is pretty active.  I saw a lot of orientation flights this afternoon so I think there is a queen that's about two months old.  I split this hive on March 28 and moved the original queen with this split.

Some of the deep honey frames also had pollen stores.   I could move 3 honey frames from the 2nd deep, 3 brood frames from the 1st deep, and fill in with 4 frames of foundation to create a new hive and let them raise a new queen.  Then, checker-board the original two deeps with foundation.

Thoughts?