I have a hive that swarmed 2X this spring (maybe even a 3rd!), but it still seems functional.
It had a deep and 3 mediums at swarm-time. The top medium seemed to be filling with honeycomb, post-swarm, so I added a 4th medium (for more honey). That was 10 days ago.
Today: checked the top 2 boxes. Findings -- the top medium's 10 frames hadn't been drawn at all, other than a tiny patch on 1 frame (by a wall). All but 1 frame in the lower of the 2 mediums had lots of uncapped honey and a few patches of capped. Also ...... the central frame or 2 had some small patches of capped brood.
So: does this make sense? What's now the top medium (I removed the 4th, empty, one) is really packed with the comb, so .... should I have left the 4th medium on there anyway? Will the bees be tempted to swarm with the top medium so thick? Maybe I should replace all the undrawn frames in a 4th medium with frames containing [harvested] honeycomb and just place it back on the hive? :s
This may sound really disjointed to anybody else; makes perfect sense to me, but then, I lived it today.
I'd appreciate any ideas/suggestions/warnings/etc ....
Mitch
It had a deep and 3 mediums at swarm-time. The top medium seemed to be filling with honeycomb, post-swarm, so I added a 4th medium (for more honey). That was 10 days ago.
Today: checked the top 2 boxes. Findings -- the top medium's 10 frames hadn't been drawn at all, other than a tiny patch on 1 frame (by a wall). All but 1 frame in the lower of the 2 mediums had lots of uncapped honey and a few patches of capped. Also ...... the central frame or 2 had some small patches of capped brood.
So: does this make sense? What's now the top medium (I removed the 4th, empty, one) is really packed with the comb, so .... should I have left the 4th medium on there anyway? Will the bees be tempted to swarm with the top medium so thick? Maybe I should replace all the undrawn frames in a 4th medium with frames containing [harvested] honeycomb and just place it back on the hive? :s
This may sound really disjointed to anybody else; makes perfect sense to me, but then, I lived it today.
I'd appreciate any ideas/suggestions/warnings/etc ....
Mitch