Wondering what you think - update...more questions!

[Ravenseye]

OK..yesterday I posted re: a couple of hives, the biggest issue being my joy at finding a queenright hive after a long time being queenless along with an abundance of honey in that hive. You all reminded me, correctly, that finding drone brood could simply be a sign of a laying worker hive. So......I opened things back up today and......

I have a real queen somewhere. Once I started pulling supers, I found mixed brood everywhere. Some drone for sure by mostly regular capped brood.

I mean everywhere. The first hive body had a lot of capped brood as did the second deep. The first honey super is really only about 75% honey. Each frame has a circle of capped brood. So does the second honey super.

Now, I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get that honey. The hive, as a whole, is heavy. But, it seems like every frame...excepting the medium I put on yesterday, has brood on nearly every frame.

I guess I could find the queen...drive her down...and put an excluder on between the deeps and the honey supers. I think the spring flow is done now so my thoughts are to leave them all on until the fall and see what the rest of the summer brings.

How about some sage advice, since I know I'm in the right place for it!

[paulnewbee1]

This is what I dont want to happen to me I hope someone give us a good response on mine and yours. I know they can.
I jsut put my excluder on three days ago to see if I can get some honey had a slow hive.

[WVbeekeeper]

>Now, I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get that honey. The hive, as a whole, is heavy. But, it seems like every frame...excepting the medium I put on yesterday, has brood on nearly every frame.

a lot of people don't like them, but this is why i put an excluder on when i put my first super on at the beginning of march, BEFORE the queen lays eggs in it. after they have a super of capped honey, i remove they excluder. very rarely have i ever had a queen to climb up it to lay above it.

>I guess I could find the queen...drive her down...and put an excluder on between the deeps and the honey supers.

you could do that, and harvest the honey a month from now, after the brood emerges and the empty cells are filled and capped. i hope you were planning on extracting because cut comb from brood wax doesn't look nearly as nice freshly drawn white wax does.


>I think the spring flow is done now so my thoughts are to leave them all on until the fall and see what the rest of the summer brings.

the spring flow has been over.we are now in the summer flow here.

[iddee]

You asked what I think....I think a new queen started laying at the top of the hive and worked her way down. If so, the brood should be capped, or mostly capped, in the supers. The brood in the hive bodies should be younger. If so, just let it sit for three more weeks. The queen has already taken care of your problem. I always wait for her to move down and they fill from the top down, before I harvest.

Only my thoughts...Other opinions may vary.

[Michael Bush]

If you have brood on those frames, they need the honey on those frames to feed brood. I would wait until you have some supers full of honey instead of supers full of brood.

[Ravenseye]

Hmmmm....iddee, I did notice that the upper mediums had capped and emerging brood. In fact, I watched a girl work her way out when I first opened the top. The two hive bodies were also heavy with honey but had uncapped larvae. Maybe the queen did work down.

I'll wait. Mostly, I'm happy to have a queenright hive. While I was sort of counting on honey this year, it's not the main priority. Next step will be addressing mites!

[peggjam]

Just wait for the brood to hatch out, then they'll fill the empty cells with honey. Sometimes I put an empty super under the ones with brood in them, and let them work it out that way. Just make sure the queen is in the bottom when you do it.:)