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Winterization issue - honey location

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mnkosch:
Hi all,

I'm new here and have a quick question about the winterization of one of my hives (I couldn't find a definitive answer on other threads). Two hives were given to me, and both have 2 deep brood boxes with a shallow honey super on top with no queen excluder. When transporting the hives, I noticed one to be significantly lighter than the other one. Initial inspection showed that both honey supers were pretty much empty, but the heavier hive had good honey stores below.

When fall began rolling in, I fed both hives 2:1 syrup (the meadow the hives are in was also packed with flowers). A few days ago, I went into both hives. The heavy hive had just begun to fill the honey super (and had lots of capped honey below) so I removed it for winter. Unfortunately, the bees in the lighter hive had significantly filled their honey super ... but with very little honey stored below (there's even some un-drawn foundation on outer frames in the upper brood box). With winter coming in we certainly have to remove the honey super for space reasons. How can I do so while making sure they get their honey?

Some options I have considered:

* Put a top board (with a center hole) in-between the brood box and honey super. Uncap the honey. The bees will feel separated from their honey and move it down (not sure if this works?)
* Remove the honey super and set it a few hundred feet from the hive, and let the bees rob it out. I'm not sure how I would prevent my other stronger hives from taking all of it.
* Reposition the honey super under the brood boxes ... the bees would move the honey up, after which I could remove the super.
What are your thoughts? Have any of you had a similar problem? The winters here in Connecticut can be quite harsh, I want to make sure this hive has enough honey while keeping the hive volume down. Thanks in advance,

Max

tjc1:
What did the bottom-most deep look like? I have had hives heading into winter with the bottom box all but empty. In that case you could remove that and leave them in the deep and super for the winter, and neither you nor the bees have to get involved in moving honey around.

cao:

--- Quote from: mnkosch on October 07, 2017, 12:15:55 am ---With winter coming in we certainly have to remove the honey super for space reasons. How can I do so while making sure they get their honey?

What are your thoughts? Have any of you had a similar problem? The winters here in Connecticut can be quite harsh, I want to make sure this hive has enough honey while keeping the hive volume down.

--- End quote ---

Welcome  :happy:

When I'm packing down hives for winter, I remove empty frames and excess honey.  If in doubt I leave extra on the hive.  I would just leave the shallow on top if you don't think that there is enough honey in the two deeps.  I don't think that the added box would affect the bees any.  They know what they are doing.  I can't think of an easy way of getting the honey moved.  If you must remove the super, I would extract it and feed it back in a mason jar over the inner cover.

mnkosch:
Thank you both for the quick reply!

Tjc1 - When I inspected the hive a few days ago, both brood boxes had *some* stored honey ... not the full frames of capped I was hoping to see. It seems the only progress the bees have made over the past month in terms of honey stores was in the super. The bottom brood box is fully drawn out, the top brood box is ~70-80% drawn out. I'd say both brood boxes have a total 1-2 deep frames of capped honey. The honey super up top has maybe 5 small frames of capped honey. I think I would be nervous removing any one of the three layers - the bees really have themselves spread out. I think the previous beekeeper might have expanded the hive too quickly.

Cao - I never thought of that ... extracting and then using a feeder seems like it could be a good idea. As I touched on above, there is so much extra space in the hive and it gets so cold here I feel like removing the super would be a good idea. For what you said above removing empty frames - do you just leave empty space in their place? Would having empty spaces in their upper brood boxes be bad?

Acebird:
Do not do option 2.  If you want some work do 1 or 3.  If you don't have an excluder in the way all you really have to do is walk away.  You probably will have brood in the shallow come spring time and make it an excellent hive to split.

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