Brood space

[banjojohn]

I have a couple of hives with 2 shallow supers of brood, when I put another on, they just make honey. I know they are crowded and need more space. What else can I try? Putting one in between or putting one one the bottom of the brood supers . Anyone else have this problem?

[Phoenix]

Are you saying the brood chamber and supers all consist of "shallows"  5-11/16" boxes?

If this is the case, I would suggest that you "super down", whch means to insert the next box of empty comb or foundation between the honey and the brood chamber.  In order to encourage them to raise more brood, move a frame or two of brood up to the new box in order to bait them up, and put one of the empty frames back in place of that frame.

[Michael Bush]

You can sneak an empty frame or two into the brood nest and move out a frame of honey, or even two frames of brood.

[banjojohn]

Thanks for the input. All I have mostly is shallow supers. A neighbor gave me his bee stuff and only 2 deeps were usable. There were  35 shallow supers (no one uses medium around here). I caught 3 swarms this spring and that's all I had. One swarm moved in itself in early May in a stack of shallows so I just left them in there, They brooded in the first 2 shallows and have almost filled 3 supers of honey( I put wax starter in these 3) the first 2 had some last year comb and a little honey). I had a piece of wood over the entrance but they got in anyway. He had boxes of wax, wired and unwired. Two of my hives have a deep and a shallow for brood, but the rest is all shallows. All but one have made at least one super of honey so far.

[Michael Bush]

All shallows probably works fine.  Standard supers around here are mediums.

[Barnabus]

Banjojohn
With all the honey it sounds like you could probally take some for yourself.
Make sure there is no brood in the supper. You can take full frames, as long as they are capped, from different shallows thiswould give them more room as well as give you some honey.
Barnabus

[banjojohn]

Thanks all, I'll do some shuffling tomorrow. I have a super of honey from last year. It came out of my 2 deceased hives last winter. I'll steal this good stuff and give them the old honey back this fall. It has been in my basement and seems fine. The bee store here rents the extractor for $12 a day but they are 20 mi. away. I'll shuffle around and get a couple supers slung out. I'll try one way in one and different in the other and see how it works out.  Kinda fun messing with them till it gets too hot and one gets in the veil.

[bassman1977]

Banjojohn, before you give that old honey to the bees, check this out.  http://beeholder.blogspot.com/2005/07/dont-feed-old-honey-to-bees.html  It's from Phoenix's blog.  You might want to PM him and see if that's too old.  He'll probably need to know the average storing temperature also.  Good luck!