Need Help

[Schoon]

I have one hive. It has two deeps and one med. with honey. I rotated the 2 deeps. I don't want to rob the med. because I'm not sure weather the honey has medicine in it or not. My question is if I moved the med and replaced it with another med. and put the med. with the honey on top will that work? Thanks

[jajtiii]

I'm in Virginia, so although I have problems with SHB, it seems that posts on this forum have indicated that you have a much bigger problem with them. I also do not medicate, period. I also rarely ever move the deeps around (that's just not part of my swarm prevention tasks - but, I only monitor 25 hives, so it's easier for me to watch each hive closely on a week-to-week basis.) Keeping that in mind, here is what I do with extra supers of honey on a hive come Flow time.

1. I make sure that I know the bees will not need the honey. A really good hive will expand into three deeps in the early Spring (this usually amounts to about 1/4 of my hives). I also have found that my bees with extra storage just get bigger in the early Spring (the honey probably acts as an insulator, a food source and gives the bees a lot of confidence.)

2. I pull the frames and drop them in a freezer for 48 hours.

3. I store them in a finished basement for use in the following manners:
a. Stores for any Spring Nucs I create
b. Emergency food for hives
c. Stores for any overwintered Nucs I create

A friend of mine that does medicate does the same as I mentioned above, but he will sometimes just extract the honey and store it, to feed it back to the bees in the Fall.

As to dropping a honey super between your medicated super and the hive bodies, I have no proof whatsoever, but would be concerned that they would move the medicated honey into my new super (folks claim bees move honey around.)

[RayMarler]

I have one hive. It has two deeps and one med. with honey... My question is if I moved the med and replaced it with another med. and put the med. with the honey on top will that work? Thanks

It'll work, but the bees will finish filling and capping it and then what would you do with it?

Here's an alternate suggestion, move that honey super down to the bottom, under the two deeps, then add a fresh super on the top. Honey in the bottom will be removed and used by the bees to feed brood and they'll start working on the new top super for storage above the brood.

[brendantm130]

I'm in a similar position. If you move the honey to the bottom, should you scrape the caps off?

[sqkcrk]

I don't want to rob the med. because I'm not sure weather the honey has medicine in it or not.

A cpl of questions.

Why do you think there might be "medicine" in your medium?
Is there much honey in the medium?
How strong is the colony? How many frames of brood and bees in the deeps?
Any brood in the medium?

You could, since you don't want to harvest the medium, put the medium between the deeps or even underneath them. Or, if you have the equipment and the source of a queen, you could split this hive.

Lots of options at this time of year.

[BEES4U]

Re:

should you scrape the caps off?

No. The bees will uncap the honey as needed.
Placing a super of honey under the brood nest is an old management technique for stimulating brood production.
Regards,
Ernie