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A couple years ago one of my colonies filled a spacer with comb, attached at the top to the underside of the inner cover, after I'd left it the spacer to make room for winter sugar board. It's really wild comb - very efficiently packed into the space. Since it has continued to be filled with bees, I've left it on, at the top of the hive. I think it's all brood, and not just drone, but plenty of worker brood. Can't really tell as all I can see is the bottom of the comb. It's all natural and I figured it couldn't hurt to leave it on, and eventually the bees would clear out of it. For all I know, the queen may be in there.
Now I have a challenge figuring out where to put it in the stack. I don't want to waste it. I would like to use a QE and limit the brood nest and start adding supers. Clearly I can't do that with this crazy box at the top of the brood nest - a QE above an inner cover might fail - they might just backfill everything below that spacer. The hive has three medium boxes plus this for its brood nest and they're using all that space. I wondered about putting this box at the bottom. Or in the middle. It's a problem but because it is absolutely packed with brood and bees and is healthy comb, I don't want to remove it.
What I don't know: sometimes bees will consider an inner cover to be the top of the hive. These have been accessing it via a top entrance. Or...I could possibly treat this hive as one that works from top down and put honey supers below it. I know some folks nadir rather than super. Not something I'm familiar with.
Now I have a challenge figuring out where to put it in the stack. I don't want to waste it. I would like to use a QE and limit the brood nest and start adding supers. Clearly I can't do that with this crazy box at the top of the brood nest - a QE above an inner cover might fail - they might just backfill everything below that spacer. The hive has three medium boxes plus this for its brood nest and they're using all that space. I wondered about putting this box at the bottom. Or in the middle. It's a problem but because it is absolutely packed with brood and bees and is healthy comb, I don't want to remove it.
What I don't know: sometimes bees will consider an inner cover to be the top of the hive. These have been accessing it via a top entrance. Or...I could possibly treat this hive as one that works from top down and put honey supers below it. I know some folks nadir rather than super. Not something I'm familiar with.
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