One hive avoiding my super, not waxing out frames.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Do you know a good method to encourage bee to wax out frames with plastacell as a foundation??

Here is what I have:
I have a 2 deep 10 frame Lang that I supered a week ago with foundation (plastacell) frames.  The frames are not waxed out in the super. Upon inspection today, there were very few bees in the super. The top deep if full of food: capped honey, open honey, nectar, pollen and no place for the queen to lay.  Both deeps are full of bees and will begin swarming mode soon unless I give space.  No queen cells yet.

The bottom deep had 5 frames of brood with 5 frames of food.  I removed 2 frames of brood and 2 frames of food and built a queenless nuc and gave the queen 4 empty frames so she has a place to lay.  Friday I have queens hatching so the nuc will have a queen cell in the next day or two after I check for queen cells in the nuc.

My plan is to coat with a paint brush the super plastacells with 2X sugar with lemon grass oil, one drop per gallon.  This is basically the best trick I know to encourage my bees to wax out the frames.  Then hopefully the bees will move Honey into the super and give the queen more room.
Blessings

[Waveeater]

I was having problems with mine also. I took them and gave them a heavy coat of wax on each side from some melted down wax scrapes from last years honey supers. I then alternated them between frames of foundation. They still prefer the wax foundation and the wax starter strips but they did finally give in and pull them out. Wish you luck.

[iddee]

Melt some bees wax and paint the plastic with it. Too thick is no problem. They will remove it to the thickness they want. They do not like to work plastic.

PS. Adding supers will not prevent swarming. You need to remove food frames from the brood nest and replace with empty frames. An immediate place to lay is the only thing that will put off swarming.

Waveeater posted while I was typing, but I'm posting anyway.

[BeeMaster2]

As mentioned, wax is important to get the bees to use plasticell. I re wax them when they get damaged or stripped. If the bees do not use it, they will strip the wax off of int

[beepro]

Alternate a few frames between the brood frames.  This will ease congestion a little so that they will
draw out the plastic frames.  Somehow they don't like empty spaces in their brood nest.  I will only do this when the
flow is on otherwise you have to feed them to draw out these new frames.

[Acebird]

The bottom deep had 5 frames of brood with 5 frames of food.  I removed 2 frames of brood and 2 frames of food and built a queenless nuc and gave the queen 4 empty frames so she has a place to lay.  Friday I have queens hatching so the nuc will have a queen cell in the next day or two after I check for queen cells in the nuc.

It looks to me like you cut the colony in half so why would they use the plastic frames even if you did wax coat them?

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Iddee{Adding supers will not prevent swarming. You need to remove food frames from the brood nest and replace with empty frames. An immediate place to lay is the only thing that will put off swarming.}

Agreed, that?s why I gave the brood deep 4 empty frames after taking 4 filled out frames to make a nuc.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

The bottom deep had 5 frames of brood with 5 frames of food.  I removed 2 frames of brood and 2 frames of food and built a queenless nuc and gave the queen 4 empty frames so she has a place to lay.  Friday I have queens hatching so the nuc will have a queen cell in the next day or two after I check for queen cells in the nuc.

It looks to me like you cut the colony in half so why would they use the plastic frames even if you did wax coat them?

Ace, I only took 4 frames out of 20 deep frames of bees, 2 deeps full of bees.

[Acebird]

What was in the top deep?

[iddee]

Ace, he gave you a hint in the OP.

""The top deep if full of food: capped honey, open honey, nectar, pollen and no place for the queen to lay.""

He didn't say if the empties he put in the bottom were drawn, foundation, plastic, or what?

[Acebird]

OK, So the brood nest consist of 5 frames of brood and he takes 2?  Is that what you would do for a honey bound hive?  I would be checkerboarding the top deep.

[iddee]

NO, it isn't what I would do, but checkerboarding the top would be useless if there is a honey cap on the bottom box frames. She would swarm before crossing it.

[texanbelchers]

It appears that there are 2 issues.  First, as originally posted, they are not drawing out the medium and second, the brood nest is honey bound.  My initial reaction would be to drop the medium between the deeps.  They "should" start to draw it out to recover.  Once they have started it well, shift the top deep to the bottom.  Another option would be to extract some deeps, but that would only solve the 2nd issue and takes a lot of time/effort.

Iddee has a point that we don't know where the honey dome stops.  If it is well into the bottom deep that could be a problem.

I've had a couple hives do the same thing this year.  My solution is to pull up honey frames, but I'm on all mediums and have that flexibility.

In a related note, I have noticed I have a tendency to give them too much space too fast for fear of swarming.  This leads to incomplete and odd drawing of frames in the nest and consequently a lot more work/frustration for me.  These seem to be the same hives that won't draw out frames above.  But, that doesn't sound like your issue.

[Acebird]

but checkerboarding the top would be useless if there is a honey cap on the bottom box frames.

Van knows the answer to this because he pulled frames out.  But my guess was that the honey cap is in the second deep.  He said no swarm cells.  There would have been swarm cells if the bees were backfilling the second deep.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

What was in the top deep?

Ace, the top deep was food, honey pollen nectar...