[mlanden]

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

 

[pjigar]

I try to give the empty box just above the brood nest with couple of brood frames moved up. You should keep the empty box if they are running out of room but you will have to bait them there to draw.