[dddillon]

I've got 8 hives that are brooding up pretty well now, and have 5 to 6 frames covered in top and bottom boxes (medium). But I have two that are quite weak, with a light 1 to 2 frames of bees. These two have food supplies right on the edges of the cluster.

Its a very early build up for this area with such a mild winter, so I'm wondering if I can add a frame of capped brood (or two), and the bees on the frames, to each of these two hives to give them a boost? It wont hurt the build up of these other hives as we have a while to go before the big nectar flow hits.

I attached a weather foercast for the area, and I think if I did this, it would be best on sat/sun 22/23 after the colder thu/fri this week.

just combining them would not be big improvement, but a couple of full frames would really fill it out in a couple of weeks.

thoughts on this?

 

[rwlaw]

Adding frames of brood would mean one would have to add bees to cover them also, my mentor always cautioned against that as it’s upsetting the balance of the donor hive when they’re building up in the spring. He felt it’s better to add a shake or two of bees to a weak hive as that will give them resources for the queen to lay more and free up the older bees for foraging.
That’s the way I’ve always played it and it works well.