Cut-down, crowd-up, or squeeze-out?

[Patrick Scannell]

In an effort to make some comb honey, I just did several cut-down splits.

I replaced hives of 4 mediums with one medium of mostly sealed brood, some eggs, no queen, and 3 supers of cut-comb or ross-round foundation.

But instead of crowding-up, the bees prefer to beard on the front, and festoon down from the bottom-board. A peek inside reveals few bees on the cut-comb foundation.

I've tried giving them more ventilation, and it is unclear yet if that has helped. They were not bearding pre-split, with even with more bees in the hive and the same number of boxes.

Is this normal, or is there something different I should be doing?

[Ross]

I find that all it takes is a decent population and a good flow. I use foundationless frames and they draw pretty snow white comb without much encouragement.

[bleta12]

Hi Patrick,

I do produce plenty of cut comb. I do cut it to one deep, you probably should have done 2 mediums, you can add one know. You should have done this operation 2-3 weeks ago and left the queen inside. The are more organised with queen, they are going to make preparations for swarming, in 5 days you take the queen out and monitor the swarm cells removing all but one. You may check them again in case you missed one. the idea is to be crowded and have a new queen. Don't put three supper of comb all at once, that relives the congestion needed to produce good comb, when the first supper is half full you add the second and so on.
What you did is a short cut 2 weeks late.
You should cut down when you see nectar coming in, middle late May in our area.

Try it again, you still can produce good comb this season.

Gilman