[bee hunter]

One of my strongest hives from last year has gotten in trouble. I did a split in early April and split is doing great! I was too long between inspections and the parent hive swarmed. The virgin queen must have died. During this time without a laying queen, they became honey bound. I have added a frame of eggs and they produced queen cells...my queen has just started laying. Numbers keep getting lower so I added a frame of capped brood on Saturday. I intend to add another frame or 2 again sometime this week. They now have 1 deep with 5 frames of drawn comb with nectar, pollen and a few eggs, 1 frame of capped brood, 4 frames of foundation, and 2 supers nearly full of capped honey. My question is what would be best for my new queen? Should I remove and extract the supers and place 1 back with drawn comb, remove both supers and feed 1to1 syrup, or remove 1 super and leave the rest alone? Thanks in advance!

 

[drlonzo]

Your new queen needs a place to strut her stuff at this point. What i'd do in your shoes is either one of two things. First i'd remove the honey supers and extract them both. After that i'd make sure that the queen had plenty of area in the brood nest to lay. If the hive is all honey bound then give the donor of those frames of brood a frame in exchange. Once they start to rear new young they will need some of that honey for their own. So don't take it all away. Then if needed give them a deep on top of what they have and give some 1:1 to get them pulling new frames. Second scenario is basically the same, but depending upon the area covered by bees in the hive brood box you may want to cut it down to size and let them catch up a bit before throwing on the second deep and having them pull it out..

 

[Tenbears]

I the hive is honey bound this tells you the bees have ample stores even if you pull the supers the bees will have ample supplies to draw new comb. Your concern at this point is room for the queen to lay eggs. pull the supers, pull a few frames of honey from the hive and store for future use. it never hurts to have some on hand. Replace with undrawn frames, the bees will draw these frames. If in a flow they will do so without using stores, if there is no flow they will use the honey in the hive, which in turn will give more space for the queen and future flows.