One of my hives was raising a new queen (on purpose, we made a split) and while they were doing that the bees collected quite a bit of nectar and pollen. They have 4 boxes of 8 frame medium supers. When I went through the hive to see how she was doing, I noticed that almost all of the brood is in the top box, there are 2 frames of mostly capped honey, in the next box it is almost all nectar, a little capped, in the next box there is another few frames of brood and the rest is nectar and capped honey. The bottom box is full of pollen except for the middle 4 frames. Here there are cells that are either empty or have small amounts of pollen or nectar.
They haven't made any queen cells, but she does look a little nectar/honey bound. (I have had a hive that had a laying queen for 2 weeks make swarm cells on me, because there wasn't much empty room for the queen to lay)
Should I reconfigure some of the hive, or let them take care of it?
If I was to rearrange things, I was thinking of moving the frames of brood closer together, and maybe extracting a couple of frames to give her more room... There is a little flow still on, and I think they still have plenty of stores, but they aren't pulling much new wax. If I were to move the brood nest, would I put it above or below the bottom box (full of pollen)?
thank you
They haven't made any queen cells, but she does look a little nectar/honey bound. (I have had a hive that had a laying queen for 2 weeks make swarm cells on me, because there wasn't much empty room for the queen to lay)
Should I reconfigure some of the hive, or let them take care of it?
If I was to rearrange things, I was thinking of moving the frames of brood closer together, and maybe extracting a couple of frames to give her more room... There is a little flow still on, and I think they still have plenty of stores, but they aren't pulling much new wax. If I were to move the brood nest, would I put it above or below the bottom box (full of pollen)?
thank you