Giving the hives room for the fall flow

I try to never let them run out of room. Bees will swarm in the fall if you let them...

IanM said:

I’ve been keeping bees for about 5 years in Southern Ontario Canada and I wanted some input on making sure my bees have room during the fall flow. Typically I run two deep brood boxes per hive with deep honey supers on top. This time of year I remove the supers which leaves each colony with two deep brood boxes that acts as my winter set up. I’m concerned doing so at the end of August may cause a lack of space. I was considering swapping two frames of honey for two frames of drawn comb in my top boxes after I take off the honey supers. Does anyone think that would give them room for the fall flow and set them up well for winter? The Goldenrod has just started to bloom. Much appreciated!

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Hi Ian, your plan somewhat depends on what the hive already has. If you do a lift test and it is heavy , then yes taking a couple frames of honey and adding in a couple of comb is a good idea. If it is light then skip that hive. Also when you trap out the bees, from the supers, if there are a lot of bees to fit into the 2 deeps then they are more likely to swarm. I am in Michigan, a good golden rod flow here can be a medium super. Reason being is the bee population is at peak, and there is also some 3rd or 4th cutting hay blooming. For me it is a bit more time but i leave the "partially" filled frames in 1 super on thru the golderrod. Extract all the rest and put them away. Go back when the bee population drops and either pull or leave the last super based on the hive weight. that would be an extra trip or 2 depending on if you trap then collect boxes. Maybe do a couple trials of 20 hives and see if the additional work has a pay off or not. Let us know what you end up doing.
GG

Thanks for the advice GG. Makes perfect sense to me. Typically I'll know if it works come Spring. Thanks again.