Queen laid brood in honey super - Now What?

[Anonymous]

:?  Well, darn it, I put a honey super on my strongest hive two weeks ago.  I looked in on the top brood box and it seemed to have adequate stores to keep the queen from crossing, so I didn't use a queen excluder.  Two days ago, I checked in on them to see how much they'd drawn out the comb.  I found brood in early stages on two of the center frames.  Didn't look much further.

Now what?  It's a medium super with wired foundation for extracting.  My hive bodies are all deeps.

My initial thought is to tear apart the super, find the queen if she's up there, move her down (where her highness SHOULD be  :evil: ) and put on a queen excluder.  Once the brood matures, will the workers fill the cells with usable honey?

Thanks!  Appreciate your help!

[Miss Chick-a-BEE]

Are you using one brood box or two? Personally, I use two, and have never had the queen go higher than that. But I believe others have had different experiences.

What you suggested though is a good idea - move the queen down, use the excluder for now, and let the bees grow up. And yes, they'll use the cells for honey storage later.

Beth

[Robo]

If your not ready to extract, don't worry about it.  As the brood hatches, the bees will fill the cells with honey.

When it is time to extract,  if there are any frames with brood, just pass over them.  

It is not an issue unless you were planning on cut comb.

Stay away from queen excluders (also known as honey excluders) if you can.

[Finsky]

Good queen rise easily to super, but that's nothing. When you get honeyflow, put third deep with foundations between brood and super.

Bees will hatch out from super and comb are filled with honey. Queen rise to lay eggs to third deep and mostly it will be honey. Let it lay eggs.

When you inspect hive and you notice whole honey frames in lower parts, lift them up and put new frames downwards.

Keep all the time free  comb space between honey stores and brood. It hinders swarming and there are space for new nectar.

I use whole summer 3 brood deeps and no exluder. At autumn the third deep and partly second is full of capped honey. I take them away and give sugar for winter. In lowest deep there are mostly pollen. No exluder needed.

[Finsky]

the bees will fill the cells with honey.

Stay away from queen excluders (also known as honey excluders) if you can.

Robo was faster than I was. He said it very well. Exluder does not bring honey to hive.

[Anonymous]

Stay away from queen excluders (also known as honey excluders) if you can.

I noticed last year that the two hives that I had queen excluders on didn't produce much honey.  As a matter of fact, I had to take the excluders out to get them to finish the comb  :roll:

The other two hives I had without excluders I was running box comb supers on, which I was told queens don't like to go in anyway.

This is actually my first super for extracting.  All my other efforts have been either one pound boxes or cut comb.

Thanks for the quick responses!

[Michael Bush]

If the queen needs room, why do you care if she uses it?  If you restrict her with an excluder and the brood nest gets all honey bound and they swarm, how are you ahead?

Brood is a good thing.  Be grateful for it.

I run all mediums, no deeps, and no excluder.  Sometimes she's laying in five boxes.  That's a booming hive and I'm grateful for it.

[Anonymous]

If the queen needs room, why do you care if she uses it?  

She has two deeps to lay all the brood she wants.  I want early honey.  Right now the black locust is in full swing here but I'll  have to wait for the brood to hatch out of my medium honey super before I could run it thru my extractor.  And even then the black locust will be long gone.

[Michael Bush]

Pull the combs out, shake the bees off, and cut the locust honey out of them and leave the brood.  Throw all of that honey in a bucket and crush and strain.  You'll find out it's just as fast anyway.

She probably moved up because the deeps are already full of honey.

[Horns Pure Honey]

My buddy Jack had the same problem a few weeks ago. We took the supers off and put a queen excluder on the top of the 2 brood boxes. Once the brood hatches it will come down and they will fill the cells with honey. See, no big problem at all :D

[Finsky]

If I want to restrict brood area, I kill the queen. I change every year my  queens 90%.  In June hive must be full of brood. Then during main yield it is time to change queen. 1-2 week break in brooding is good for yield.

Our yield period is about 1 month long.  

Many of our professionals use exluder, bu they have their own reasons.  
They want to  for example to resrict the brood area that hive is only one box for winter. Another thing is that it is easy to take all honey away.

I can tell one thing.  Last summer was a hobbiest who do not knew what to do, when swarm escaped. He put an exluder into hive.  :(  He had nursed bees 30 years.

[Michael Bush]

>Then during main yield it is time to change queen. 1-2 week break in brooding is good for yield.

This is a concept that seems hard for people to grasp, but if you can get a hold of it, you can double your yeilds, cut down on varroa, cut down on swarming and even get splits.  It's all in the timing.  It needs to happen some time between two weeks before the flow to right at the begining of the flow.  You need to take the queen out about two weeks before or take all the open brood and the queen out right on the flow.

[Anonymous]

She probably moved up because the deeps are already full of honey.

Which leads me to another question....  I was actually thinking of this on the way in to work this morning (which is quite the task this morning, considering I woke up with a tremendous headache - weather related - and can hardly think anyway...  :( )  If at the start of the season in April/May I see that there are large honey stores in the brood boxes, can I uncap them, extract the honey (to use as bee food) and help deter spring swarming?

Thanks, Michael!  And of course everyone else who's contributing to my thread!  This is only my third year beekeeping, and there's so much to learn, but I'm trying!   :lol: