newbee question

[newbee 101]

I added a 2nd deep a couple weeks ago and the queen is laying eggs up there (both sides of 3 frames so far)My question is will she go back down into the first deep?
If not, what happens to all that empty comb from the hatched brood? Thanks.....



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"To bee or not to bee, that is the question"

[Daisy]

The workers will clean and spit shine the cells and at some point they'll direct her back to them....

[Michael Bush]

The empty brood comb will be brown and have cocoons in it. It won't hurt anything unless you wanted cut comb honey from it. They will fill it with honey when she moves on. Hard to say if she'll move back down. Queens do what they want. But you can catch her and put her in the bottom box. She might stay. She might now. You could probably drive her down with some smoke too. Still, she may stay and she may not.
Put some empty drawn comb in the brood chamber and she's more likely to stay to lay it full of eggs.

[athiker]

If she gets close to filling the top and shows no sign of moving down, why couldn't you just switch the brood boxes, putting the top one, with the queen, on the bottom, and the bottom one on top? Queens tend to like moving upward for some reason.

[dickm]

You could put the queen and some of the brood and several (or all of the) empty frames on the bottom and a queen excluder over that, then the second deep with some capped brood. The capped brood on top will hatch out and make room for whatever comes next. With an upper entrance (Imirie shim) you won't impede the bees too much. When the bottom deep is almost full of brood, remove the queen excluder and let her work up. This gives you more control of the hive and will prevent swarming because from the queens point of view she has more room. She may not percieve empty frames beneath her as available space. With luck you'll need to add a super at some point.
Or you could do nothing. http://www.beesource.com/ubb/smile.gif

dickm

[newbee 101]

Should I be inspecting the 1st deep, or leave it alone?

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"To bee or not to bee, that is the question"

[Daisy]

I like the queen in the bottom going into winter. I don't pay much mind to where she is, this time of year.