Brood areas being filled with honey?

[ss91]

I started this year in the middle of June with two packaged bee sets. Everything has been going fine to this point and I just added second deeps to each about a week ago. My question is in both boxes the area where the queen had been laying is now being filled with honey. In both boxes I saw no eggs but, had pupae and capped brood. I think I need a larger population of bees for the winter as I have only 10 to 12 frames covered. The honey flow has been strong as I have alfalfa blooming nearby. Will the queens start producing eggs again or are they done for the year? Another question is I know I need to have the two boxes filled with honey for the winter but, how large of a population of bees do you need when going into winter? Also I in central Washington so winter can get quite cold. This is my first year with bees. Thank you for any help.

[Sundance]

Open up the brood nest by moving some of
the honey heavy frames up and to the
outside of the top box.

Population size and store amount vary a
lot depending on breed of bee, and the
areas temps.

[Dave W]

ss91 . . .

>how large of a population of bees do you need when going into winter? . . .

Sundance's answer about "it depends" is correct, but here are some "textbook" answers (to give you "some idea"):

Mid-August population of new “package colony” should be approx 45,000 bees and still increasing.

Package colony population peaks at about 50,000 bees mid to late September [Ref 4, p91, 102] w/ bees covering at least 16-17 frames.

[ss91]

Thank you for your help. One more question though. What would cause the bees to fill these areas woth honey?

[naturebee]

SS91,
What breed of bee are they?

[ August 22, 2006, 05:28 PM: Message edited by: Pcolar ]

[ss91]

I am not sure which breed of bees they are. I purchased them from a local beekeeper and did not think to ask.

[Quint Randle]

I had this situation where both brood boxes became "honeybound" which means they are bring in so much honey there is no room for the queen to lay. I think was just too late in putting a honey super on. (Do a search on the boards for "honeybound" and you'll see several posts.

Anyway, I still saw little spots of new eggs, so I knew the queen was OK. The hive was just honey bound. Following advice I did two things. 1) I removed a couple of full frames and switched them out with empty or undrawn frames from a weaker hive. 2) I took 3 or 4 other frames that were pretty full of honey, uncapped around any brood, and extracted the honey and then put them back in the hive. (I got about 1-1/2 gallons of honey from 3-1/2 deep frames.)
That "opened up the hive" and I checked a few days later and the queen was cranking, laying again like crazy. Things were back to normal. That was July 18th when I did the extraction.

Now, in just a little over a month they took off again and I now have two honey supers almost that will be extracted in the next couple of weeks. And I've still pulled several brood frames during the month from this strong hive for the weaker hive.

All from a package installed May 1.

So look into this... It really worked for me, but I knew the queen was OK and still laying when I did it.

Quint

[Dennis D.]

We are in the pretty much the same boat as ss91. When we started our hive in early June this year we were told that when we pulled the frames out they always had to be placed back in the exact same location as they were removed. With your advice here they seem to be interchangeable. Is this just for the honey stores? Is there ever any need to move the brood frames?

Dennis

[Sundance]

ss91........ If they do not have a 2nd brood
box or honey supers they will get honeybound.

Try to find out what breed your queen is. It
really makes a major difference on how they
will winter and what stores are required.

[sierrabees]

Sometimes you can get the bees to move the honey up by taking a capping scraper and breaking up the caps on the lower frames of honey. If they have to hold on to the honey for very long in the moving process they will start to produce wax and draw out comb to put it the honey in. Make sure you know where the queen is before to touch anything with the scraper.

[Dave W]

ss91 et al . . .

Remember as the bees begins to prepare for winter (now???), the bees will want to load the top of the brood nest w/ "winter stores". If you think you have a "fall flow" in progress and the bees have or will have another late flow to collect stores for winter, maybe adding honey supers to collect "extra" honey might be wise. But, this time of year, I'm not sure how to tell a NewBEE that the hive is "becomming honey bound" (like in spring/summer).

The closer it gets to a killing frost/freeze (natural flow will cease), the less willing I am to tell a NewBEE to "move" honey (the bees know where they want it).