Going into winter I had a hive of two deeps with the nest contained in the lower one of the two. The upper had ~5 frames with old comb in it and the rest were empty frames. Yesterday when I checked the hive, the nest had expanded into the upper box, new comb had been drawn on much of the outer frames and had eggs in it, and the center frame had empty cells in the middle (I assume that means that one generation has already hatched). There was nectar and pollen throughout, but not as much as I thought there would be...
I have a couple questions:
Thanks for the help!
I have a couple questions:
- Should I add an empty super at this point? As they are approaching capacity I feel like I should put a honey super on top. Fruit trees are about to bloom here in San Diego, so I am predicting an increase in nectar over the next few weeks. I am out of drawn comb at this point, so it would just be empty.
- Should I be worried about the low amount of nectar/pollen? I fed them at the end of December and they quickly gobbled it up. I can easily feed them again but I don't want to contaminate any nectar that would be coming in soon.
- Would a queen excluder encourage the lower frames to be filled out instead of the nest continuing to grow upward? I have read Walt Wright't book on nectar management and he seems to imply that the brood nest will just continue growing upward if space is provided. I am hight limited due to local codes so I can't make my stack much higher...
Thanks for the help!