Large swarm hived - frame orientation approach?
We caught a very large swarm yesterday. They're covering two 8 frame medium boxes (we run all 8 frame medium hives) pretty well. We initially captured them in an 8 frame medium box with 7 frames of foundation and one frame of drawn comb. We then added a second box of drawn comb on top and added a feeder (didn't want to disturb the lower box in which we captured them) on day one but I'd have preferred to have the drawn comb below and foundation above.
We checked the hive this afternoon and they'd consumed all of the syrup (probably 1.5 gallons) and stored it all in the upper box of drawn comb. We re-oriented the frames as checkerboard - alternating drawn comb and empty foundation - in both boxes with the hopes they'll get going on drawing comb.
Any thoughts on that approach? We haven't done the checkerboarding method but thought it may be a good way to start them off on drawing comb.
We caught a very large swarm yesterday. They're covering two 8 frame medium boxes (we run all 8 frame medium hives) pretty well. We initially captured them in an 8 frame medium box with 7 frames of foundation and one frame of drawn comb. We then added a second box of drawn comb on top and added a feeder (didn't want to disturb the lower box in which we captured them) on day one but I'd have preferred to have the drawn comb below and foundation above.
We checked the hive this afternoon and they'd consumed all of the syrup (probably 1.5 gallons) and stored it all in the upper box of drawn comb. We re-oriented the frames as checkerboard - alternating drawn comb and empty foundation - in both boxes with the hopes they'll get going on drawing comb.
Any thoughts on that approach? We haven't done the checkerboarding method but thought it may be a good way to start them off on drawing comb.