Upside-down hive

[bison]

One of my hives has wintered in two deeps and one medium super. I did an inspection today and found the following: bottom deep virtually empty, top deep mostly full of honey and supplies with a couple frames of brood in the middle, top super loaded with brood in middle 4 or 5 frames, with honey on the outside. So basically the brood is in the top where the honey should be and the honey is in the top deep where I want my brood. What do?

If I do nothing, I fear they won't work their way down, especially since there's so much honey they'd need to move around. Presumably this would encourage them to swarm.

My thought is to wait another couple weeks, then remove some of the deep frames of honey and replace them with drawn comb, presumably making more room for them to move down. I guess I could also try to push the queen down then with smoke, then add an excluder to keep her below the super.

Thanks!

[JRG13]

They'll move down, don't sweat it. I don't know why people get all anxious about where the bees are in the boxes, they know what they're doing most of the time.

[DC Bees]

I had a few hives last spring that did the same thing, what a pain in the back side it was! One of the problems I had was if there is a top entrance they will store pollen in the supers.I tried queen excluders with no luck, the queen would find her way back through. Even had one hive that started to make queen cells in the supers after I moved her down.I don't like using excluders but I also don't want the queen laying in my supers.Try storing frames with pollen in them, the wax moths will have a feast.

[fieldsofnaturalhoney]

I would not sweat it as stated by JRG13. They should naturally work it out themselves. However, before going into winter I would make sure they have worked it out,,, and have a super of honey above them. I recently lost a two deep ten frame colony to starvation, the cluster was in the top deep with stores they had mostly eaten except about three inches on the opposite side of the frames where the cluster perished. The oddest part was the lower deep literally had nine frames of capped honey. I assume the weather was continuosly cold for several days and they could not move down to it, or the opposite side of the frames for that matter.

[Michael Bush]

Their instincts are to store honey over the brood when there is a flow and that will force the brood down. But only if you don't pile on the supers right away because they they will store it overhead and not push them down...

[Oldtimer]

If I do nothing, I fear they won't work their way down, especially since there's so much honey they'd need to move around. Presumably this would encourage them to swarm.

They may or may not work their way back down. But at the moment they are set up pretty much like a comparable feral hive would be, and the next natural behavior on their calendar will be to swarm, as you have correctly surmised.

Me, I would put the top box at the bottom of the hive, leave the middle box in the middle, and the empty bottom box, on the top. They then have plenty of room overhead and feel there is work to do before they can swarm.

Course, this alone is not garuanteed to prevent swarming, but it's a giant step in the right direction.

If you are concerned about black combs in the honey supers, you may want to rearrange things comb by comb to try to get the white combs upstairs. But the basic configuration you should aim at is brood and as much stores as will fit bottom box, whatever else second box, and empty top box.

[fieldsofnaturalhoney]

Their instincts are to store honey over the brood when there is a flow and that will force the brood down. But only if you don't pile on the supers right away because they they will store it overhead and not push them down...

Michael, I wonder what happen to this group of ladies then (post 4). They started as a local nucleus hive, and I down supered them (do you think that had something to do with it?), but the bottom deep appears never to had brood in it. Based upon the capped honey & color of the comb. I know nothing is absolute, but strange and wish I would have caught it before winter.

[Michael Bush]

How far down they get pushed and by when, all depends on how far they get in development and build up and stores.