[tomkat]

Add a box to your better hive, stop feeding them.
Take 2 frames of honey ( does't need to be capped ) and a frame of celled brood and two drawns frames and put them into a 5 frame nuc (if you have one ). 2 days latter take out the capped brood and brush off all the bees. Then put in another frame of brood with eggs no older then threes.

Do this from your stongest hive.

After another week, check them and see if you have Queen Cells. If you do check back once a week. Leave this nuc for at least a month after she is laying,,then go back and pinch the queen in your weak hive. Give them 24 hours to two days to find out they are queenless. Then you can transfer the new queen and her eggs and larva into that weaker hive.
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[tommysnare]

Uhhhhh I'm not asking about making queens or nucs. I'm already making those. I'm just asking if I should be adding supers when they haven't taken over the second brood box.

 

[Greg Lowe]

I'd give them room and super liberally. If they don't need the room, then you haven't lost anything. My concern in AL would be giving a hive too much room to defend against SHB. You can always pull any unfinished frames later to reduce the hive volume and allow the hives to rob them out, so you haven't lost anything by being optimistic.

 

[Troutsqueezer]

When you "made the nucs" earlier, I assume you split existing hives?

If one gets honey from a first year hive or a hive that came from a split, that is a bonus. I would focus on getting the weaker hives up to snuff and not worry about harvesting any honey from them the first year.

 

[tommysnare]

When you "made the nucs" earlier, I assume you split existing hives?

If one gets honey from a first year hive or a hive that came from a split, that is a bonus. I would focus on getting the weaker hives up to snuff and not worry about harvesting any honey from them the first year.

only looking to harvest from the overwintered hives from last year which were nucs purchase in early Spring. they built to 2 deeps last year and i got a little harvest. when i made nucs in early spring THIS year i only took very light workforce,frames with brood and stores and the overwintered queens.

 

[virginiawolf]

I'm with Greg Lowe on this one. I have some hives that are just getting started but I gave them supers. The oldtimers in our bee club always remind us younger beekeepers that you better get the supers on or you can miss the flow. You may want to keep a small entrance until the next round of brood hatches or something. I think I understand why you are asking. If there isn't many bees they won't have much of a work force to gather honey?? that is what I have thought at least. The thing that I think though after watching the bees is that by putting the supers on it gives the bees a chance to clean them up and get the ready for storing the nectar so having them on I believe sets the bees into a mindset of how big the hive is and they position things where they do in the brood chamber based on that size as far as warmth and stuff so having the set size in advance I think is good. Just my thoughts anyway. I have been thinking about bees lately