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When to stop swapping frames for season?

4K views 12 replies 5 participants last post by  RayMarler 
#1 ·
I have 2 hives: one with 4 mediums but one is empty, so 3 mediums.

One with 6 mediums.

I did a full inspection today and saw both queens.

The 3 medium hive has a lot of empty space - some honey, capped brood, larvae on several frames, but nothing to write home about. This was a weak overwintered hive that I requeened with Russian in late June. It hasn't revved up as much as I hoped it would. 2 weeks ago I swapped a frame full of capped brood and a couple honey frames into there.

The 6 medium hive is crazy productive. Many frames of capped/uncapped honey, full capped brood, larvae, you name it, it has it.

Winter bee laying will come soon.

Pollen is coming in.

So. I will need to swap more honey and I think more brood into the weaker hive, in order to make it thru winter. Since I just swapped some brood and some honey 2 weeks ago, I'm wondering when to time another swap. I don't want to weaken the strong hive, altho it seems they have enough for 2 hives in there.

Should I hurry and do all the swapping now before August is over, to give them time to work while it's warm, or give it another few weeks and see how everyone is doing?

Also, I'd feed the weak hive syrup to try to jump start it, but I'm paranoid of robbing, esp. this time of year. Right?
 
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#2 ·
When you say 3 mediums you are saying 3 hive bodies with 10 frames? To feed swap honey frames. I do not think adding another frame of medium will weaken the larger hive. If you are concerned put an empty drawn frame in the large ,wait a few days and transfer eggs , not much of an investment for donor.
 
#5 ·
Wouldn't you know it, that hive got knocked over by a darn bear tonight. Dog scared it off before it got any further, I set it back up (they weren't too happy - I had my suit on) and tomorrow I'll see if I even have a queen in there, hopefully she didn't fall out. Fortunately, no equipment damage.

Thought I'd get away with not having an electric fence. Guess not.
 
#6 ·
No bear experience here, but you may be better to leave them alone. Deer knocked over one of mine, week later it absconded. You can tell alot from how they act today. quick look in a few days will show QCs if she was killed.

Roland's point is valid for the receiving hive as well. To some extent that queen will cut back on laying to even things out. Keep that in mind and look at repeating egg transfer to increase. (or just move capped brood)
 
#7 ·
Too late, I already checked the hive, found the queen in the bottom super, just had to know so I could relax. I think the hive is too small/weak to abscond.

At this point I'm going to hold off on any transfers till I get fencing up, and that will be close to a week. (Dog duty, she loves that anyway.)

Beekeeping is not for the faint of heart. It's a battle.
 
#11 ·
This year is weird. normally, by the calender, we are approaching the witching hour, where all splitting is over, and the focus is on evening up the hives. Not this year. We have Yellow and White sweet clover, Dutch clover, alfalfa and goldenrod in bloom. I think we still have a frew weeks of "wiggle room" before it is what it is.

crazy Roland
 
#13 ·
If it was me, I'd be taking the empty box of combs off that weak one. I'd go though it and put the most empty combs of the three boxes on the bottom of the stack. Then I'd give them pollen patty and syrup feeder. This is what I'd do if I wanted to keep trying to save it into winter. I'd not want too much empty space in a hive this time of year, the bees regress with too much space to deal with, especially this time of year when they are more in condensing mode instead of expanding mode.
 
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