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[bee_keeper]

ok. we have 10 hives. 1 is very busy, and the queen is allowed in a brood and and 2 supers. they filled them up. so we added a brood on top of that :scratch: so the queen has 1 brood then 2 supers then 1 empty brood thenthe queen excluder then 2 supers for honey. :doh: help. what should i do. what happens when winter comes. thanks :p:thumbsup:

[G3farms]

after you have robbed what honey you are going to take I would remove the queen excluders, I have seen hives starve out with honey above the queen excluders, they would not move through them to get to the stores to feed the masses for some reason. Try to consolidate the the brood nest and plac frames of honey above it.

G3

[honeydreams]

ok first step in beekeeping is keep the brood togeather that means not haveing honey supers in between them you should have two deeps then honey supers after that. and why did you add another deep on top of your super? what was the logic behind this?

[doc25]

Don't confuse brood with supers. The queen will lay in supers or brood chambers or ...? You are using meaningless terms that the bees don't understand. Try using terms like deeps, mediums and shallows it is easier to follow. The queen will lay up to a queen excluder if she and the bees want to regardless of what you call the box. At this point I use pretty much all deeps. One of my hives has 6 deeps and 1 medium, there is no excluder so are they all brood boxes? is the medium the only super and I have 6 brood boxes? Get where I'm going with this?

So I don't know what you need to do geographically (1,2 or 3 brood boxes to overwinter). If you need 2 deeps to overwinter then move the second deep on top of the first one if you think they will have time to draw it out then put the queen excluder on top of this and the other "supers" on top of that, or even easier is to remove the excluder and toss it aside for this year and let them do what they want. Come fall start at the top box and take them off one by one until you end up at the required volume for winter survival and harvest the ones you took off.

[wcubed]

Congratulations! You have stumbled on the best wintering config. for most of the U S of A. Remove the empty "brood" at the top, and let it ride.

Assuming the supers are essentially filled with nectar/honey, that's equivalent to a deep of honey. (Shallows;exactly; Mediums;a little extra) If you are careful to insure that the broodnest gets backfilled with nectar/feed at brood closeout in the fall, you have the best wintering status available.

In late winter/early spring, beg, borrow, or steal a box of empty comb the same size as your upper super and checkerboard the two. You will be astounded at the results.

Walt

[bee_keeper]

i want to get the bees back into 2 broods. how can i do that with 1 brood then 2 supers?

[bnatural]

If you want to get them into two deep boxes as brood boxes, then you need to swap the empty deep and the two 'supers' whatever size they are. So, the configuration from bottom to top would become: bottom board, deep, deep, super, super, inner cover, top. I would remove the excluder and let them move freely between boxes. In a perfect world the bees backfill the brood area top to bottom and naturally drive the queen down into the lower part of the hive by winter.

Now, that's the easy part. The hard part is going to be getting them to draw out the deep in the time you have left before the cold weather sets in. I don't know how much summer weather you have left, but I suspect not much. If you have a flow on, they may draw it out. If the flow is over, then you are going to have to feed, but then you won't be able to harvest honey, since you will get both 'real' honey and sugar water honey mixed. That's the price you may have to pay for waiting this long to move boxes. You might be able to remove a few frames from the supers on the sides for your own use, if there is no brood or pollen in them, but be careful you don't take too much and leave them with too little for winter.

If you make the switch, you can try moving a couple of frames from the full deep into the empty deep to entice them to draw it out, but I suspect that, since they will be in that deep moving between boxes, if there is still time they will draw it out.

The other danger of this move is that you will split the brood at a time when the temps are starting to get cool at night. The brood in the supers on top might get chilled.

All in all, if it were me, I would not try to rearrange the hive this late in the season, unless I could put drawn comb in the empty box. I think you are better off leaving them as they are, leaving the honey on the hive for the winter, and then rearranging in the spring. After all, you have nine other hives from which to get honey.

Bill

[USCBeeMan]

I'm with cubed. Remove the top high box. It all of the supers are of the same size, moved all of the frames with brood to the lowest super and consolidate all of the honey to the top super. If you still have frames without brood in the "brood" super after consolidating the brood then make sure that you put some frames with honey/bee pollen on the outside. Now is the time to take a frame or two of honey from the top super if there is 4 or 5 frames. Remove the honey (using an extractor so that you don't destroy the comb). Immediately put the extracted honey frames back on the top super. Then feed, feed, feed.

The feeding will not affect the honey that you wanted. The extracted frames will be used to store SW honey for the winter along with the other frames in the top super. They feeding will also allow the bees to back fill the brood box and any other "brood" frames with honey as the queen moves down for the winter.

You might want to put on a small bee pollen pattie now to all an increase in brood so that they can work any fall nectar flow and assist in filling in the frames with pollen and honey (nectar floow and from feeding).

I am just a second year beekeeper but that's what I would do if I wanted a frame or two of honey.

Good luck.