I am in need of some advise (again) my hives are doing great large populations and bringing in lotts of nector I am running a 2 deep setup and medium supers my problem is the bees will not store the nector in the mediums as the brood is hatching out they are backfilling with nector in the deeps any tips to get them to store in the mediums?
Getting bees into honey supers
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Are your mediums drawn out?
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Backfilling the brood as it hatches is a behaviour that is sometimes in the lead up to swarming.
Provided there are enough bees in the hive and they still actually have a queen you can solve both issues like this. Take a few brood combs and put them in the honey boxes, alternating them with the honey combs. Put the honey combs from the honey box down among the brood nest, alternated with brood combs.
This spreads the bees considerably & will encourage them not to swarm, for now. I a week or 10 days have a look the combs among the brood nest should be drawn, a few of them may contain larvae. Swap them back to the original position in the honey box and return the brood combs to the brood nest. You now have drawn comb, honey, and possibly brood in the honey super and the bees will start working in that area.
If you use a queen excluder, throughout these manipulations shake the bees off any combs you lift out of the brood nest to ensure you do not get the queen above the excluder.
Provided there are enough bees in the hive and they still actually have a queen you can solve both issues like this. Take a few brood combs and put them in the honey boxes, alternating them with the honey combs. Put the honey combs from the honey box down among the brood nest, alternated with brood combs.
This spreads the bees considerably & will encourage them not to swarm, for now. I a week or 10 days have a look the combs among the brood nest should be drawn, a few of them may contain larvae. Swap them back to the original position in the honey box and return the brood combs to the brood nest. You now have drawn comb, honey, and possibly brood in the honey super and the bees will start working in that area.
If you use a queen excluder, throughout these manipulations shake the bees off any combs you lift out of the brood nest to ensure you do not get the queen above the excluder.
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OK, one reason I only use one box size.
All is not lost though here is what you could do. In the brood boxes you will find a number of frames on the outside that have no brood and could be removed temporarily. take out say, 5 of them and store somewhere cool and bee proof. Replace them with medium frames but spread the brood and alternate these mediums among the brood.
A week or 10 days later put everything back, with the now drawn mediums in the honey box. If some of them do contain some brood that will be an added draw card to get bees up there.
If there is comb hanging off the bottom of the medium combs scrape off & discard.
All is not lost though here is what you could do. In the brood boxes you will find a number of frames on the outside that have no brood and could be removed temporarily. take out say, 5 of them and store somewhere cool and bee proof. Replace them with medium frames but spread the brood and alternate these mediums among the brood.
A week or 10 days later put everything back, with the now drawn mediums in the honey box. If some of them do contain some brood that will be an added draw card to get bees up there.
If there is comb hanging off the bottom of the medium combs scrape off & discard.
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As an alternative to Oldtimer's good advice. Take a deep frame of mostly sealed brood, and replace it with an empty deep frame. From each of two medium supers remove one of the 10 frames from position 5 or 6; Put both of these two supers on the hive - you should now be able to see directly down to the broodnest. Hang the deep with brood in the gap that the two medium frames previously occupied. There will be a bit of a gap underneath it as the frame won't reach the bottom of the bottom medium super.
Bees will come up to take care of the frame, realize that there is nothing up there, and start working on the empty frames. When you are sure that this is working you will be able to take out the deep frame and squish the other frames together, and then put the undrawn two mediums in position 1 or 10.
The deep brood frame should be checked every couple of days in case they start swarm cells on it, that is why it is best to use a mostly sealed frame.
Bees will come up to take care of the frame, realize that there is nothing up there, and start working on the empty frames. When you are sure that this is working you will be able to take out the deep frame and squish the other frames together, and then put the undrawn two mediums in position 1 or 10.
The deep brood frame should be checked every couple of days in case they start swarm cells on it, that is why it is best to use a mostly sealed frame.
Would this work? Leave the medium supers alone but just break up the brood nest by moving empty deep frames from the edge of the top and bottom deeps, alternating them with brood frames in the top deep. This would break up the backfilling of honey and make a "chimney" of empty comb for them to work up through.
So I went with this method today on my three strongest hives I didnt know if I should use an excluder so I did will check next week and see how it went
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