Winterization issue - honey location

[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]

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.

Welcome 

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.

[tjc1]

I would either do nothing, as Ace suggested, or see about consolidating space. If there are only two frames in each deep that have honey, I would look at how many of the rest of the frames are currently being used (not just drawn out, but covered with bees and containing stores or brood). How many frames total have any brood? Most likely any brood bearing frames are aligned in the two deeps, that is, the ones above are in the same positions relative to the ones below. If you only have 6 frames with any brood between the two boxes, you could put all those in the middle positions of one box, with the 4 honey frames on the outsides (two on either end). Then you leave the super above with the rest of the honey, and you can remove one deep and 10 empty frames. Of course, if the hive is really big and more frames are in use, just leave it as is.

Rather than uncapping, extracting and feeding back the honey they already have this late in the season I would feed them some 2:1 syrup to build up their winter stores, as it sounds as if this hive might be light going into the winter. Depending on how your hive is set up, you can lift the back end and stick a bathroom scale half-way under the back edge. This will tell you approximately 1/2 the hive weight (so double that to find the approximate total weight). My understanding is that a hive of Italians going into the winter in the north should weigh somewhere between 100-125 lbs.

[cao]

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?

Any empty spaces without frames is bad.  If a frame will fit then there should be one there.  The only exception would be in a super where you want fatter honeycomb.  You can remove a frame and evenly space the rest.  This works best with drawn comb during a good flow.  As far as removing empty frames, I meant a box full at a time.  The frames could be from the same box or several boxes(rearranging the rest to fit back in the hive). 

[mnkosch]

Thanks again for all the replies.

I'll do another inspection this upcoming week and check about consolidating space. I think it will be very close to being able to remove one of the brood supers. As a side note, the frames are all pretty sealed into place with propolis so the inspection might take awhile (not even sure the previous beekeeper did inspections, lol). Do you guys have any ideas to prevent robbing from my other hives while I'm in the hive? Thanks in advance.

[cao]

Do you guys have any ideas to prevent robbing from my other hives while I'm in the hive?

When you pull a box off set it on something solid(inner cover, top cover, table, piece of plywood, etc..) then put something on top to cover the box(inner cover, piece of plywood, even a sheet or towel will do).  There will almost always be bees flying around but a real robbing frenzy really starts when those "scout" bees get a gut full of honey and return to the hive and tell the rest where it is.  If you can keep the boxes that you pull off the hive closed up until you are ready to put them back on, It will prevent a lot of robbing.

[BeeMaster2]

Kosch,
Bee ready to close up the hive. If you think you have the only hives in the area, lock the other hives in before sunrise, work the hive and then release the other bees.
Jim

[tycrnp]

I've been following this thread.  I had not worried about robbing during my hive inspections.  Is this something I should be taking precautions for each time I do an inspection?

[BeeMaster2]

TY,
When there is a good flow going, no.
When there is a dearth, yes
Jim

[bwallace23350]

Good thread. I have enjoyed reading it. As for my bees I am not doing anything to them during this fall flow and letting them fill up their supers and probably not going to feed all winter unless I just have to. They should have a full super or near enough going into the winter months and I probably will be ok.

[mnkosch]

Hi everyone,

I finally had a chance to go into the hive this afternoon and everything went great. I removed the honey super and set it down on the top board (thanks for the suggestion Cao!), and then set the upper brood box on top of that. I inspected the bottom brood box (which was still in place on the cinder blocks) first. Towards the edges, there were frames that were only partially filled out. In the middle there were filled out frames, and 1 or 2 had honey on them. I removed ~6-7 frames from this box with no brood or honey (just comb). Moving onto the upper brood box, there too were frames around the edge that were not significantly filled. However, towards the middle there were some frames with nice brood pattern (shaped in large circles, covering the middle 40-50% of the frame) and honey. I put all the "good" frames into the bottom brood box and ditched the upper brood box and all the empty / unfilled frames (still can't believe I was able to find ten to remove). I put the honey super on and dumped all the bees still clinging to the frames / box in. Thank you all for the suggestions, I was really happy with how it went and I'm glad I was able to remove all the extra space for winter while keeping all of their honey in the hive.

Some concerns:

I never actually saw the queen, despite looking carefully at every frame I was going to remove before shaking the bees off. I did notice a strange cluster of bees on one of the frames ... I couldn't tell if the queen was under them or if it was just a "beard" trying to stay warm. They looked pretty frantic. Was there a chance this was her? (don't worry, this was one of the frames that I kept)

I ended up having to remove one frame that had a significant amount of capped honey on it (it was bare on the other side of the foundation). Do you think if I uncap the honey and put it in the upper box of the hive (where my top feeder is, and the bees can access through a small hole) they will eat it / move it down? Just don't want them to start building on it.

Edit: Also, below where I set the boxes on the outer cover, there were a whole bunch of hive beetles that had fallen out. I had put beetle blaster traps in about a week ago, but they didn't catch anything (I think its because of bumps and sizing issues on my frames, which prevents me from getting the whole trap to lay flush with the top of the frames). Any suggestions to control them before winter sets in?

Thanks again guys, I really appreciate all of your help!

[Acebird]

It is my experience that honey on the outside of the outside frames does not get consumed during the winter unless you pack two hives together making a common wall.  That honey will get consumed in the spring time during brood expansion as they build back down into it.  As a rule I am against hive manipulations this late in the season but everyone does things different.  Keep us posted next spring on this hive.

[mnkosch]

Ace, I don't think I positioned any honey stores on the outside of the outer frames so hopefully no honey goes to waste. I'll definitely update you guys in the spring with how this hive did.

I did end up feeding the 2ish frames of honey back to them ... I just scooted the sugar water feeder to the side to allow bees into the top box through the hole in the inner cover. They had the whole frame CLEANED out within a day (absolutely no honey left).

Also, one final concern. I noticed that in two of the other frames I removed there was substantial pollen stores (it was getting dark when I was working on the hive and I just did not notice them). Any suggestions for "feeding" this back to them, if possible (maybe making something like a pollen patty with it?)? Right now, I just have the two frames of pollen sitting in the upper super where they can access it.

Thanks in advance