Brood in Super

[Curtammy]

    Reposting this since i think I put it in the wrong forum last time.

  I started keeping bees 2 years ago.  Bees did great and are still doing great ..except..here's the part.  I decided to add another super this year to the 2 hives that are doing good.  so now i have 2 brood and 2 super boxes on each hive.  I decided to check in on them the other day and i have brood in my supers now.  and they aren't using the bottom brood box, on either hive.  Also i started 2 more hives with 4 lbs of bees each and queen.  And im just using 1 brood box for them right now, should i add a super to them?  They have been in there 2 weeks and are already drawing the comb and producing honey.  Thought i would share that last part cause it seemed really fast.  In Northern Nevada. and these are Russian Cornilian Bees.  I really like them.

[asprince]

As for your new packages, I would start them in a single deep. When 8 of the 10 frames are drawn, add a second deep. When 8 of the 10 frames of the second deep is drawn, add a honey super over a queen excluder.

As for your existing hives with brood in your supers, how much brood is up there? If there is only a frame or two, I would insure the queen is in the lower boxes and place an excluder between the brood boxes and honey supers. When the brood hatches they will fill with honey. As the queen needs more space, she will move down to the lower box.

Good Luck,

Steve 

[Curtammy]

there's just 1 frame in the super with brood in it.  And I was a little reluctant to put a queen excluder in there.  Since its also called a honey excluder.  Lots of opinion against them i guess.

Thanks

[hardwood]

Don't be so anxious to give them more room if they don't need it. As asprince suggests, wait until they need the room before adding boxes.

Scott

[Bee Happy]

there's just 1 frame in the super with brood in it.  And I was a little reluctant to put a queen excluder in there.  Since its also called a honey excluder.  Lots of opinion against them i guess.

Thanks

I had the same problem  with the "honey excluder" issue. I only have one deep per hive (I had it on very, very good authority that that's how it's done in our climate); so the deep is 100% full when I put my honey supers on in early March. I had a little bit of egg intrusion in the first super, followed by an explosion of honey storage for a couple months into the upper supers. - I had tried the queen excluder on one hive and nothing on the other, and got only one full super out of the excluder hive. I'm thinking of just using a bee escape when it's time to wean the eggy super off the hive. I'm still learning, and having a fresh queen every year is more important than I wanted it to be.

[Curtammy]

Thanks everyone for the feed back.

[asprince]

there's just 1 frame in the super with brood in it.  And I was a little reluctant to put a queen excluder in there.  Since its also called a honey excluder.  Lots of opinion against them i guess.

Thanks

I always use an excluder because I do not want brood in my honey supers. I run a traditional set up. Deeps for brood and mediums or shallows for honey. If I had started out using all mediums, I probably would not use and excluder because I could move frames around as necessary.

As you said, lots of opinions. For what it's worth, that is how I do mine.

good luck,

Steve

[Brian D. Bray]

Bees will rebuild a hive the opposite of the manner in which they consumed the stores during the winter.  If they started their cluster in the bottom box, then moved up as the honey was used (as is the case with Italians) then adding a super before both brood boxes were fully developed allowed the bees to move the brood chamber up (also a tendency of Italians).   

When adding supers it's best to wait until the majority of the traditional brood nest is developed before supering, let them rebuild the hive from the top down until all brood boxes are occupied then super.

There is nothing wrong with a third, or even forth brood box.  It helps build up the hive to greater numbers during honey flows and the bees will back fill them later when the need for such large numbers of bees no longer exist.  Harvest and extract the frames.  If you don't like brood combs in your supers then use the frames that had brood in them for settling swarms or packages.