Hello Beekeeps – I’d like to get your opinions and hear your suggestions. I’m unsure of what I to do, if anything.
Should I take off the medium super? Should I leave it in the middle? or On top?
I have one bee hive that I began from a package of bees in April. I seem to have a good number of bees but the hive is probably not as strong as it should be. It’s hot and dry and there is little to no honey in the hive and I’ve started feeding again and I think I may need to take off the medium super but I’m not sure. The problem is I’ve mucked around with the order of the supers… and I don’t know what my bees want or need for the coming weeks/months.
Details below.
my hive consists of three layers, one deep brood nest, one medium super and one shallow super.
As of today, It’s stacked like this.
bottom - Deep brood nest, the only hive body with brood and eggs
middle - Shallow super, comb drawn out on all frames, honey in center of a few
top - Medium super, comb is being drawn out…. (no brood, no honey), I alternated every other frame with a starter strip vs a full sheet of foundation).
All the hive bodies have been on the hive for awhile now… initially I put the shallow super on 2nd . I thought it was a medium super, I only realized it was a shallow when I added the 3 tier… oops.
I left it this way (deep, shallow, med) for a bit (till most of the foundation was drawn out and they were beginning to store honey) but then got thinking (trouble) that I needed another tier and that I really wanted the medium super for brood and the shallow for honey.
So I moved the shallow super up when I added a third super (making the order deep, medium, shallow). I left it this way for maybe 5-6 weeks (until today), and the bees don’t seem to have made much progress -- they still haven’t drawn out the comb in the medium and it looks like they stopped storing honey in any meaningful amount in the shallow. ( I think I just mucked’em up a bit).
Any way, how to I encourage (and help) these guys build up honey stores & population?
Should I take off the medium super? Should I leave it in the middle? or On top?
Aaah! That is my question. I hope you could follow along.
Thanks