Hi folks, harvested what I could this weekend and I've got a couple of questions -
1) On one hive I had two shallow supers and they had fully capped only about 5 of the 18 frames. Another 4-5 frames are full of nectar but barely capped. Remaining frames are empty. I'd love to get another 4-5 frames of honey so I put the uncapped frames back on the hive along with empty frames in the hopes they'll cap them. At this point the hive has three packed medium brood boxes, a queen excluder, and then a shallow with the uncapped nectar. Anything I can do to encourage them to finish capping those frames/anything else I should be doing?
2) Hive number two was a different story - swarmed, difficulties raising a queen, etc. - so it's fairly light. It had two shallow empty supers that I've removed. In my manipulations to get it requeened it also wound up with a medium box above the queen excluder which is fairly full of nectar. Very little of it is capped. Given that the hive is light I'd like them to take that nectar down into the brood boxes (now a double deep). To that end I scratched any cappings on all frames and put the medium on top of an empty deep box. So the hive now has two deep brood boxes, a queen excluder, a completely empty deep, and a full medium with nectar/uncapped honey. Any ideas on how to get them to move that nectar down?
Thanks in advance for all the help. For context our flow is basically over at this point and the bees aren't drawing out foundation (even when feeding them). I plan on mite testing in the next 1-2 weeks so I've got a little bit of time before treating (if needed).
1) On one hive I had two shallow supers and they had fully capped only about 5 of the 18 frames. Another 4-5 frames are full of nectar but barely capped. Remaining frames are empty. I'd love to get another 4-5 frames of honey so I put the uncapped frames back on the hive along with empty frames in the hopes they'll cap them. At this point the hive has three packed medium brood boxes, a queen excluder, and then a shallow with the uncapped nectar. Anything I can do to encourage them to finish capping those frames/anything else I should be doing?
2) Hive number two was a different story - swarmed, difficulties raising a queen, etc. - so it's fairly light. It had two shallow empty supers that I've removed. In my manipulations to get it requeened it also wound up with a medium box above the queen excluder which is fairly full of nectar. Very little of it is capped. Given that the hive is light I'd like them to take that nectar down into the brood boxes (now a double deep). To that end I scratched any cappings on all frames and put the medium on top of an empty deep box. So the hive now has two deep brood boxes, a queen excluder, a completely empty deep, and a full medium with nectar/uncapped honey. Any ideas on how to get them to move that nectar down?
Thanks in advance for all the help. For context our flow is basically over at this point and the bees aren't drawing out foundation (even when feeding them). I plan on mite testing in the next 1-2 weeks so I've got a little bit of time before treating (if needed).