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Advice on new hive

1K views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  B Reeves 
#1 ·
Hello, I bought my first nuc two weeks ago. Really seems like I got alot of bees, and I saw the queen she has a white dot painted on her back, a Minnesota hygenetic Italian. I ordered a bee hive from dadant before picking up the nuc. Turns out it was three 6-5/8 supers not a hivebody. The nuc was drawn out hive deeps so the configuration I had wouldn't work. The bee keeper let me buy a hive deep from him so the nuc frames would fit. I put 5 of my short super frames in to fill it up. Now there is comb drawn on the short supers with eggs and brood. Now my deep frames are here what should I do with the short ones with the brood on them? I was thinking moving them into a honey super, once they hatch off could I use it normally as a honey frame.

Is there any disadvantage to having supers with no comb drawn out on the hive before they are needed?
 
#2 ·
Don't put on another super until the uppermost box on the hive has 7 or 8 frames fully drawn. If the bees can choose to go up they will do that instead of going out. THey will draw comb on the center 3 or 4 frames and then move up and leave the outside frames alone in all of the boxes.

If the brood in the comb on the bottom of the mediums looks like it is mostly drones, you could cut it off and put it out for the birds to eat the larvae. A lot of times the bees will build drone comb off the bottom of a frame like that. If the cells look a little larger and have domed caps, they are probably drones. If they are mostly drone I would go ahead and cut it off. The abundance of drones will only consume hive resources and do nothing at all for your colony.

If it looks like worker cells you can let the brood in the comb on the bottom of the meduim frames hatch out. If you do, try to watch for when they are mostly empty and then cut the comb off and rotate them upward and replace with deep frames.

Another option would be to cut the comb off and tie or rubber band it into an empty frame. The bees will attach it to the frame and finish filling in the open space in the frame. They will even chew up and discard the string or rubber bands once they have everything glued in nice.
 
#3 ·
Matt, I generally agree with Carl. The 6 5/8 supers make great hive bodies. I used 3 of them exclusively for the hive body for years. If you leave the frames with comb on the bottom in a deep hive body on the bottom, the bees will eventually move up out of them. Then you can cut the excess comb off the bottom. Bees want to move higher in the hive. That is why some of us reverse supers.
 
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