Honey bound queen?

[Rodger J.]

Hi y'all,

My name is Rodger. I live in central Arkansas. I'm a new beekeeper with two hives. I'm been doing a lot of reading on the forum and feel I know many of you. I started my beekeeping quest by attending a new beekeepers class put on by my local beekeepers association. I purchased the equipment recommended for my area. One deep and one medium super for the hive body and shallow super for honey. They are ten frame with spacers making them nine frame boxes. Because that's what was suggested. I wish I had read the forum before I purchased the equipment because I like the idea of all the boxes being the same size. But I was in a hurry and didn't want to miss out on the spring season. I think I will be changing to all mediums eventually. I installed my bees on April 12th. The man I purchased the bees from told me to add the mediums on May 5th.

On May 5th I checked the hive bodies. One was almost completely filled with capped brood, pollen and honey. The other one was about 90% filled. I added the mediums as instructed.

On may 12th I checked the progress on the mediums. The stronger group had it about 80% pulled. I read on the forum they can fill one quickly so I added the shallow super. The weaker group had barley started pulling the medium so I left them alone.

Today, May 19th I checked on the progress. Both groups are filling the mediums with raw honey. None of it capped but also no brood or pollen. This brings me to my question. The reason for the medium was for the queen to have plenty of room. I guess she didn't get the memo. I read that the queen will not cross the honey dome and with them filling the mediums with honey I fear she will become honey bound. Where I live we are allowed only two hives. If the queen thinks she's running out of room she my decide to swarm. I can't just capture the swarm and start another hive so I want to keep these together if I can. What do you guys recommend? I'm thinking add another medium between the deep hive body and the medium they are filling with honey.

Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated. I'm sorry this is so long but I thought you might need some background.

I guess hive getting big is a good problem to have.

Rodger

[Kathyp]

add another box  under the honey....or pull some of the honey and replace with empty frames/foundation.  since you are using a different box size, you can't really swap the frames around. making room with another box or empty frames are your choices i think.

you can take that honey and save it to feed back later.

[Joe D]

Hi, looks like Kathy covered your question and welcome to the forum.  Good luck with your bees.  The doing one thing and then finding out you would have been better off doing it another way is all part of the learning.  I've done that also.

Joe

[Rodger J.]

Thanks Kathy and Joe. That was kind of what I was thinking. I will eventually change to all the same size boxes.

We can only hope the bees can survive the keeper.

[Kathyp]

hey rodger, when you get a chance go into your profile and put your location.  it will help later when you have area specific questions.  the bees may or may not survive, and it may or may not be your fault if they don't.  it's all a learning thing.

[Finski]

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Problem with small hives and with good nectar flow is that bees fill the hive with nectar and then the hive swarms. New beekeeper has no experience what is going on.

It is very safe to give extra room under the brood box. Bees may enlarge hive by drawing new foundations there. What I mean, one box up and one box down.

It takes 4 weeks that new emerged bees are so plenty that they can oppupye second box.

The progress of swarm or package bees is that fist they occupye the frames. They make brood as much as they can. At same time bees will die gradually and they cannot make any more new larvae.

Before the new bees emerge, half of bees have died and that it the most difficult monemt in the hive.

Brood in the cell produces as much heat as a resting bee. That helps the hive keep the proper heat.
Adding boxes over the brood cools the hive. In nature they expand from up to down.

..

[Jrg13]

I was thinking maybe you could remove your spacer and open up the middle and add a 10th frame w/o foundation.  May alleviate any swarming activity as it gives the nurse bees something to do and you will get a full frame to lay on.  Won't help with moving the queen up though.  Removing the honey or moving it to the outside is probably a good choice if you don't have a box to add in the middle.

[winginit]

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It is very safe to give extra room under the brood box. Bees may enlarge hive by drawing new foundations there. What I mean, one box up and one box down.
..

I'm a new beekeeper, too. Actually my third year but year two didn't count (my Dad broke his hip one day before bee package arrived...Dad survived, bees didn't). I have two new packages. One package has filled a deep box, but doesn't seem to want to move up to the the new medium super. If I want to add space for brood, am I supposed to be putting new supers below the drawn box?

[Finski]

 am I supposed to be putting new supers below the drawn box?

When you have package bees, it is like a small swarm.  4 lbs occupy 10 Langstroth frames and they draw the foundations..

Don't feed too much, that food do not take too much combs, but hive need allways at least one full frame of food but not more than 2 frames. It is about 8-10 lbs sugar.

If the hive has 8 frames of brood after 2 weeks, it cannot nurse more. Its bee population is going down every day.

But it does not harm, if you give another box under brood box - just for sure.
Probably it does not draw it but it does not harm.
.

[winginit]

Thanks Finski!

Hi Rodger, good luck and welcome.  :)
 

[Rodger J.]

Thanks everyone. Glad to have found this forum. I'm trying to leave them alone and let them do their thing. At the same time watching to see if I can detect a problem before it gets too far along. I think a batch of brood hatched yesterday. There was a lot of what looked to be orientation flights going on on both hives. I would assume that new bees would take over nursing jobs and nurse bees would move to the next job, etc and a new batch of foragers would take orientation flights.

Thanks again!