[Zanotti]

I have the standard double deep set ups. Rotated the deeps in the Spring and as the colony grew added two supers.

I went to open the hive last week, and the lower super is completely full of capped brood. Really pretty capped brood in very new cells - so it looks like honey, but is too light in weight and is brood. Did not use queen excluders, as last year the colony behaved well and kept the brood low and the honey high.

How to I correct this problem? One good thing is when all this brood hatches this will be a huge hive, at the very right time in the season.

Add another super and let them sort it out? Shake out all the bees low and add an excluder?

 

[Lastfling]

Add your excluder after being sure the queen is not above it. Once the brood that is currently in the super matures and moves out, all should be good.

 

[Fivej]

Another option is to do another reverse,placing the medium at the bottom of your stack. There are pros and cons in having a medium as a brood box. Pro: you can use a med frame of wet brood over an excluder to encourage bees to draw out medium frames, you can use medium as a pollen box on the bottom when you overwinter which also raises your brood box and cluster (warmer). The Cons: inability to move frames to your deep brood boxes and the problem you just encountered! J

 

[Dan the bee guy]

No you did it RIGHT! I take it that you had supers with just foundation in them. Sometimes when supers are put on with a queen excluder they will not see anything above the excluder as room for expand. Now that they know that the supers are room for them shake all the bees into the lower boxes put the excluder on and the honey supers back on .