Brood Nest Moves Up

[mgolden]

Hive presently has four deep supers, two brood and two for honey. Over wintered with two deep brood supers and each time I add a honey super, the brood nest moves up.

I am using a top entrance and this may be contributing to brood nest moving upward. Have two small openings on sides of bottom entrance open and two corners at back of of screened bottom board open. Hoping to keep draft out of bottom brood and brood would stay down.

One remedy is to move queen to bottom broods, have open cells, and add a queen excluder. Had a bad experience with a queen excluder and bottom entrance last year and got honey bound and swarmed.

Appreciate any advice.

[garprob]

I guess you could start supering on the bottom like warre hives.

[beedeetee]

It sounds like you added boxes too early. Are the bottom two empty?

[Acebird]

It sounds like you added boxes too early.

That is the juggling match in the spring. Supper to early and they just go up. Supper to late and they swarm. I would rather super early. So what if you have an empty box on the bottom. It insures that they won't swarm. When they back fill the top box with honey then you can add more supers and they will be less inclined to move the brood nest up above a cap of honey.

[mgolden]

Two brood supers were nearly full of brood, pollen and nectar/honey, when I added the first honey super.

Even with brood moving up, brood supers are full of pollen and nectar.

Should I have placed capped honey in the center six frames of the first honey super to try keeping the queen in the brood supers???

[beedeetee]

No, what you did is fine. I found the same thing to happen when I added boxes without an excluder. You can wait until they force her down with honey or place her in a bottom box and put an excluder above the top box that you want her in. Now I let them start drawing a little comb (if I don't have drawn comb for my honey supers) and then put an excluder over the top brood box. I think that they will always move up without an excluder. At least they always did for me. Now I always use them.