TTT

[.30WCF]

To The Top
Im sure this has been discussed in length many times. As I once again stood in the humid summer heat and thought to my self, nah, not today. Maybe tomorrow Ill feel like moving those boxes to check on the queen. Nah, probably not tomorrow either. These bees still have all this springs honey in them. I was in them last week. I know I dont need to go in, but Id like to. Man its a lot of heavy boxes as tall as I am just to look in the bottom couple.

If you put the brood on top with the QX under them, will they leave her room to lay up in the high rise?






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[Acebird]

I wouldn't do that

[Ben Framed]

If you put the brood on top with the QX under them, will they leave her room to lay up in the high rise?

Good question...

But you know when Winter comes the bees will cluster. The food storage for the winter months will need on top for their access. It is my understanding that bees will not move downward for food when in a cluster. I do not know what will happen in the meantime. It is possible that the bees will begin back-filling the empty brood cells which are available, and will becoming available with nectar and honey, which will reduce brood space causing a forced swarm situation.  I would not do it unless one of the well seasoned beekeepers like Mr Bush or Beemaster2 gave me the thumbs up, and I don't look for that to happen...  But I have been wrong before lol.....   

[BeeMaster2]

WCF,
Why do you think that you have to go in and inspect them every week?
If you were a new beekeeper maybe but not when your hives are that big. I would not inspect them until after you pulled all of the honey and even then I would not inspect them until fall in preparation for winter. If they are bringing in pollen every day and there is a good flow of bees, they should bee fine.
I would not pu the queen on top.
Jim Altmiller

[Michael Bush]

It does kind of disrupt the natural instincts, but it works ok.

[.30WCF]

WCF,
Why do you think that you have to go in and inspect them every week?
If you were a new beekeeper maybe but not when your hives are that big. I would not inspect them until after you pulled all of the honey and even then I would not inspect them until fall in preparation for winter. If they are bringing in pollen every day and there is a good flow of bees, they should bee fine.
I would not pu the queen on top.
Jim Altmiller

I know I don?t need to as I said earlier. I just like to mess with them. I only have 4 hives right now. Sometimes I look at 1 per week just so
I have a chance to get in them every week. This year I?ve almost completely ignored them and then have been struggling to keep queens in some of them.

One hive (left) has a queen that just started laying that I don?t really like.

Middle hive has no queen but I put some eggs in there a week or two ago.

Right hive has a swarm I caught a couple weeks ago combined with them. She was laying last week. You can see the rifle targets chewed up on the landing board from the combine. I didn?t have any newspaper, but I had just gotten back from shooting and had some targets.


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[The15thMember]

I know I don?t need to as I said earlier. I just like to mess with them. I only have 4 hives right now. Sometimes I look at 1 per week just so
I have a chance to get in them every week. This year I?ve almost completely ignored them and then have been struggling to keep queens in some of them.

I like to inspect weekly as well.  I have 10 hives and usually do 2-4 inspections in one day, so the each colony gets inspected roughly every three weeks.  If I were you I'd just pull some honey off of them, that way you don't have to do so much lifting.  I always leave one full super for the bees, and anything after that gets pulled as soon as it's capped.  If you don't want to extract right now, you can always freeze the frames and then store them in bins until you are ready, if you prefer to do all your extracting at once.   

[.30WCF]

I know I don?t need to as I said earlier. I just like to mess with them. I only have 4 hives right now. Sometimes I look at 1 per week just so
I have a chance to get in them every week. This year I?ve almost completely ignored them and then have been struggling to keep queens in some of them.

I like to inspect weekly as well.  I have 10 hives and usually do 2-4 inspections in one day, so the each colony gets inspected roughly every three weeks.  If I were you I'd just pull some honey off of them, that way you don't have to do so much lifting.  I always leave one full super for the bees, and anything after that gets pulled as soon as it's capped.  If you don't want to extract right now, you can always freeze the frames and then store them in bins until you are ready, if you prefer to do all your extracting at once.

So, how about for folks who don?t have ample freezer space for honey frames or just comb that you are trying to save in bins, put a piece of cardboard down just big enough to hold a block of dry ice and let it do it?s thing. I would think the dry ice would freeze the frames for a day our two, and if you never open the bins, they should be free of parasitic boogers.

Anyone try this yet?


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[The15thMember]

So, how about for folks who don?t have ample freezer space for honey frames or just comb that you are trying to save in bins, put a piece of cardboard down just big enough to hold a block of dry ice and let it do it?s thing. I would think the dry ice would freeze the frames for a day our two, and if you never open the bins, they should be free of parasitic boogers.

Anyone try this yet?

I have never tried anything with dry ice, literally anything.    I only have room for about 8 frames at a time in my freezer, so I just freeze capped honey frames for 24-48 hours and then put them in tightly lidded plastic bins, usually in the house, until I'm ready to crush and strain.  You'd just have to make sure that the dry ice really got them all really frozen through.  Any little spot that wasn't cold enough, and you could have one beetle larva or wax moth caterpillar ruin a good chunk of that honey.     

[.30WCF]

If anything is gonna do it, dry ice will. Put it under anything you want to keep cool with an insulation barrier between them and it acts like a refrigerator.

Put it on top of anything you want to rapidly freeze.

Couple years ago we quartered up an elk and put a couple blocks of dry ice on top of the meat in the cooler. Several hours later, it was frozen solid. As in large mounds of meat dozen in chunks rock hard.


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[Acebird]

Make sure your bins are sealed and at room temperature once they have been through the deep freeze

[iddee]

I put the supers in plastic garbage bags and tape all edges after freezing. Then I don't have to worry about keeping the bins sealed.

As for the OP, I think they would move honey upward until she has no place to lay.

[Ben Framed]

As for the OP, I think they would move honey upward until she has no place to lay.

One of my concern as well..