[thisoldfish]

Hi,

One of my hives swarmed about 2 weeks ago. New queen any day now.. but in meantime looks like they've been backfilling the empty brood cells in the deeps w nectar despite plenty of room in the supers. I even undersupered to get the less full super lower but they still seem to prefer packing it in the deeps. I'm concerned that the new queen won't have anywhere to lay. I've heard some mention extracting those deep frames. If I do that, it's mostly open nectar, cells of pollen, some brood etc. What do I do with this extract- feed it back to them in mason jars? I could replace a few of the honeybound frames with empty drawn comb.. but again, what do I do with those old frames with some capped, lots of open nectar, pollen etc?

Any advice much appreciated,

Thanks

brad

 

[thisoldfish]

yep- I get the benefit to having drawn comb-- in fact I saved some frames of drawn comb from old nuc last year. And now coming to use! Ok- I get that I need to swap in some empty frames once she's laying. My question is what to do with these frames of wet nectar filled cells-- all those old brood cells filled with nectar (plus pollen plus some brood). I was told to extract-- but what do I do with this stuff? I would guess it's too wet to be honey. are you advising just freezing that whole frame as is and then just plunk it back in when needed?

And- is this idea of bees re-arranging stores to make room for laying true? I haven't observed that-- from what I've seen they leave things alone and if there's nectar in the cells there's nectar in the cells. curious if others have really seen this rearrangement thing?

 

[thisoldfish]

thanks all. And it's definitely not a matter of not enough super.. they have one full super and a partially drawn 2nd super--when I saw the backfilling post swarm I undersupered hoping to get them to deal with the partially filled super but they just kept filling the deeps.

Ok- this has given me some ideas/direction-- thanks all.

brad