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No room for Brood

1370 Views 2 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  Fivej
My two hives both swarmed. It looked normal two weeks prior to the swarm. I inspected both hives after the swarm. They are full of honey and nectar. Hardly any room for new queen to lay eggs. Prior to the swarm I put a queen excluder on between the deeps and two supers. One super if full of capped honey the other isn't touched. It has drawn comb from last year. I then put the empty super above the deeps then put the queen excluder between the empty super and the full super. Is that all I could do? Or what should I have done?
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Extract the honey from a couple of brood frames and reinsert?
This is common and it contributes to swarming. One option is to remove the frames of nectar and honey, extract them and put them back. Another option is to swap out the frames with foundation or drawn comb and put the nectar/honey frames in the freezer for later use. I have been doing a mix of both methods which gives me new drawn combs as well as stores for overwintering if they come up short. If you swap out frames with foundation, be sure to "checkerboard" them with frames that are already drawn out.
On a flow, they will become "nectar bound" very quickly, so you have to keep on top of it. Unfortunately, they don't always store the honey in the supers as we would like them to. J
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