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checkerboarding mistake

842 Views 1 Reply 2 Participants Last post by  Robert Hawkins, 
C
I have a hive I started this spring from a package. They drew out the bottom box just fine and had about half of the top box drawn out when I decided to “checkerboard” the top box to speed up their efforts drawing out the comb. Well they stopped drawing comb from the foundation, pulled out what they had already drawn real deep, and filled it up with honey. So now I have every other frame in the top deep filled with honey (some brood as well) and the others are blank foundation. What should I do? I tried to use 9 frame spacers and put the drawn frames back together but they are drawn to deep even for 9 frame spacers. I’ve thought of uncapping them but I would like to leave the honey for the bees. If I do uncap them and drain some honey will I still be able to feed them back to strength for the winter?

P.S. Think I have learned my lesson and will no longer checkerboard with undrawn foundation.
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R
Chief, I was following you until you got to the nine frame stuff. Nine frame spacing is for honey supers. If anything you want more surface area in the brood nest. If you can't pull frames to inspect, you HAVE to fix it. So go ahead and extract em. Try using ten frames while they're drawing comb. Remember before closing every hive to push the frames close together. All TEN of them. Nine won't cut it while they're drawing comb.

I had nine frame spacers on half of my supers. I removed them after grabbing the wrong one to try to draw out foundation. It doesn't work. I now have an eight frame manual spacer. Whcih I never have when I need it. Good thing I'm getting good with the tip of the uncapping knife.

Hawk
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