Bottom box filled with pollen and honey

[aircooled]

A few days ago, I went into one of my hives that went queenless, and went searching for a new queen. I did find the queen and she is laying, but I am concerned. I currently have a bottom box being a medium, then a deep, then another medium that I recently put on. The medium on the bottom is almost completely filled with pollen and nectar. More pollen than anything. I am thinking because of the time that we were queenless, the bees started filling these cells up (right or wrong?).

They are building out the medium on top, and the queen was found laying in the deep in the middle. Should I do any manipulations of the boxes? I was thinking I would take the bottom medium, put it above the deep, then hope that they make room for more laying area by moving pollen upwards?

OR should I switch the boxes around, but place another empty deep above the one I have to give the queen room to lay so she doesn't get all crowded and fly the coup?

Thanks so much for any help. This is my second season, and the first one seemed so much less complicated.

-mike

[hoodswoods]

don't tell me that the first season was easy compared to your second - it sounds too much like calculus (my first year)

[NasalSponge]

From a lot of the reading I have done lately it seems bees in the wild keep a band of pollen at the bottom of the brood nest. I believe Ross Conrad is one of them that says this. Anyway I personally would not worry, your bees put it there because they want it there so just let them do their thing.:D

[RayMarler]

I think I would leave it the way it is. Maybe they store the pollen on bottom, in anticipation of the broodnest moving down as they move and store honey up. They might just give you that top medium full of honey in time.

[USCBeeMan]

Leave it alone for now. But if the brood box in the middle starts to get full of brood, I would move the bottom med above the brood box for them to expand. Hopefully they will just put honey in the top med. If you wait too long they may start putting brood in the top med while the other med is on the bottom.

JMH Rookie O

[wcubed]

The wild colony maintains a polllen reserve below the broodnest. It is used to support the fall build up in August when field pollen is scarce. This reserve pollen is not normally seen in double deeps.

Your bees should be in the "main flow" at this time. That period is dedicated to restoring the wintering overhead honey and the brood nest will be deminishing untill the the fall build up to rear young bees for wintering. Details can be found in Point of View this site: Home, Resources, POV, End of the List. (#21 & 41 treat the subject)

Leave it alone for the purpose intended.

Walt

[tecumseh]

are you in an area active with small hive beetles or wax moth? are either active now?

if yes to both of the above questions I would make a small wager with ya' that if you do leave this box where it currently rest that in a fairly short period of time the two above mentioned nasties will drive the bees out the top of the box (the bees will typically abscond if that makes you feel any better?).

it is my observation here that for some reason a pollen filled bottom box is not guarded like you might expect the girls to look after either nectar or brood. you may have wondered about this yourself when you dismantled this hive and noted the lack of bees in the bottom box and bottom board????

[wcubed]

No wager, thank you. Yes, we have both those pests in this area, but I try not to encourage large populations of either. Will concede that if you feed them well, either can be a nuisance.
Walt

[afss]

does anyone have a range map of the small hive beetles or wax moth?
thanks

[BEES4U]

I make a few very strong hives queenlees in the spring so that they pack in the pollen so that I can give it to my cell builders or nucs.
Ernie

[tecumseh]

afss writes:
does anyone have a range map of the small hive beetles or wax moth?

tecumseh:
I don't have one.

these two nasties are concerns over much of the southern us of a. neither does well in sub zero weather (matter of fact for both my main remedy is a freezer I maintain in my honey house). one might expect during the spring and summer months that either might be a problem anywhere you can maintain bees (given how much we tote the girls about).

back to aircooled's concern...
(if it was me???) and I noticed the entrance at the bottom box was not well covered by guard bees (especially as the sun was setting or rising) I would either rotate the box upwards or intermix frames somewhat to make certain I have sufficient guard bees at the front entrance.

[aircooled]

I actually still have the entrance reducer on (not the smallest opening, the one up from that), and I've only seen one hive beetle in my hive, and that was last year. My hives are four stories up on my roof, and we're in the city, so there is limited ground for them to do whatever it is they do underground. I've seen some wax moth activity on one of my hives when it was dying, but not too bad.

I was planning on adding boxes as needed and not have any queen excluder.... this hive is from a package, and I just want to make sure they build up well this year.

It sounds like everyone is saying to keep things where they are, which I like just fine. How quickly will the bees go through these full frames of pollen? Thanks to everyone for your help.

[Steve717]

A few days ago, I went into one of my hives that went queenless, and went searching for a new queen. I did find the queen and she is laying, but I am concerned. I currently have a bottom box being a medium, then a deep, then another medium that I recently put on. The medium on the bottom is almost completely filled with pollen and nectar. More pollen than anything. I am thinking because of the time that we were queenless, the bees started filling these cells up (right or wrong?).

They are building out the medium on top, and the queen was found laying in the deep in the middle. Should I do any manipulations of the boxes? I was thinking I would take the bottom medium, put it above the deep, then hope that they make room for more laying area by moving pollen upwards?

OR should I switch the boxes around, but place another empty deep above the one I have to give the queen room to lay so she doesn't get all crowded and fly the coup?

Thanks so much for any help. This is my second season, and the first one seemed so much less complicated.

-mike

Your bees have stored a pollen reserve that they will use in late summer and fall to raise the brood that will form a strong winter cluster and produce a good honey crop next year.