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7 days one of my strong hives swarmed because it was honey bound. I caught the swarm and am waiting foe it to get going. I have seen the queen and she is a new one not marked. But the old hive when opened today has brace comb everywhere sticking all of the frames together in the top 2 inches in both brood boxes and the bees are not touching the supers (2). I am not using a queen excluder on this hive. it is too cool to keep the hive open looking for the queen.
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Clinton Bemrose
Howdy Clayton -
Sounds like you may be using Duragilt foundation (or maybe some other plastic fnd).
Bees are not fond of plastic and do a poor job of drawing unless there is a heavy honey flow on. Even with feeding sugar syrup, they are not overjoyed.
Pete Rogers
I am using pure 4.9 beeswax foundation
and not feeding right now
Clinton
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Clinton Bemrose
Clinton
You wrote:
I am using pure 4.9 beeswax foundation
and not feeding right now
Reply:
If 4.9mm in the broodboxes, are the honeysupers the same size foundation Clinton? If they are you need to make space for the hankered down, clogged boxes in the broodnest. I am assuming that the broodboxes and honeysupers are different sized woodenware equipment.
This sure makes it hard to keep the broodnest opened for the queen to lay during the active year. You need another broodbox and space for the bees to lay.
If foundation is the same in the supers (4.( try lifting up one broodbox and putting the shallower super inbetween for the bees to work.
If the foundation is different then all I can say is the bees don't want it, and you need to change it to 4.9 size, and then see if the bees will come up, but for now if the foundation is the same, do what I just said above.
Hope this helps you some. It's hard to keep pyrimading up combs to build a new colony when boxes and supers are different.
Regards,
Dee A. Lusby