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Here in Ohio the weather has been in the upper 50s-mid 60s during the day and 40s at night. I have 4 hives and two weeks ago I pulled honey supers from 3 of the hives and put feeders on to get them to start packing the hive for Winter. The remaining hive had 2 supers on and was absolutely packed with bees. I left the supers on this hive since I was going out of town for 10 days and didn't want to pull the super and leave them overcrowded while I could not check in on them. I just checked them today and found the first 3 hives filling up with the little syrup I gave them as well as nectar from the Fall flow. I am pretty satisfied with the weight they are putting on, so I gave each of them roughly a quart of syrup and closed them up.
My question is regarding the hive I left the supers on. One of the supers is mostly filled, and probably 75-80% capped. There is one small remaining area of brood in the middle frames where the queen got into (I was not using an excluder). I scraped off the cap on one of these brood cells and saw a nearly fully developed bee inside. The rest is all nectar. I checked the brood boxes for weight and while the top brood box has more weight to it, the lower brood box is still pretty light. This hive is overall lighter than the other 3 that I pulled supers on and fed starting 2 weeks ago.
Should I give the super another week or so to let the remaining brood hatch out and also give them time to cap it off? Temps are going to climb into the upper 60s and 70s through the 2nd week of October here. Or do I pull the super and put a feeder on to get them putting stores away in the brood boxes they will over-winter in (thus sacrificing the remaining brood area and uncapped honey)? What would you do?
My question is regarding the hive I left the supers on. One of the supers is mostly filled, and probably 75-80% capped. There is one small remaining area of brood in the middle frames where the queen got into (I was not using an excluder). I scraped off the cap on one of these brood cells and saw a nearly fully developed bee inside. The rest is all nectar. I checked the brood boxes for weight and while the top brood box has more weight to it, the lower brood box is still pretty light. This hive is overall lighter than the other 3 that I pulled supers on and fed starting 2 weeks ago.
Should I give the super another week or so to let the remaining brood hatch out and also give them time to cap it off? Temps are going to climb into the upper 60s and 70s through the 2nd week of October here. Or do I pull the super and put a feeder on to get them putting stores away in the brood boxes they will over-winter in (thus sacrificing the remaining brood area and uncapped honey)? What would you do?