[BSCOTTM]

Hello all , last week i bought two new hive full of bees from an old timer beek. He had too many and the neighbors were complaining. Anyway , both hives have one deep then a shallow super then queen excluder with another shallow super on top of that. As where my other two hives i started this april have 2 deeps and a med. Super on top w/no excluder. My question is , should i add another super or remove the shallow and add a deep for brood? Or just leave it alone?

 

[willrich68]

What would be wrong with adding the deep between the other deep and the shallow super and pulling of that dang excluder and let the queen do her thang. Just my opinion, its worth what you paid for it.
Wlliam Richarson
Hayden Alabama

 

[Brent Bean]

I see this could start a debate about using or not using a queen excluder, without answering your question. :scratch:
What I would do is add a deep for brood, make sure the queen is not in the shallow super, put the excluder on top of the new deep and place the medium on top of the shallow. If there is brood in the shallow they will hatch out and the bees will fill it with honey. Then extract the honey when you decide to do so.

 

[honeyshack]

i agree with Brent. Use two deeps for the brood, make sure the queen is not in the medium super.
However, I am not a big fan of extracting honey out of brood comb. If this comb looks rather new, not dark, should be ok. But if this comb is dark, I would not extract it. There is a small risk of contaminated honey if this beek used chemicals in the hives. If you want the mediums emptied, you could feed it back to the bees, then go through the box and pull out any dark comb.
Just a thought.