[mjbeefriends]

I inspected two of my hives yesterday and approximately six or more of the 10 frames are solid honey and it seems they're not building out the supers as fast I thought they would. I moved the hives to the mangroves May 18 which are blooming. I have one super on each colony. One box they had about 35% of the super built out and the other zero %. My questions are:

1. Should I remove a couple honey frames from each box and add new frames to the middle so they will build out more brood frames so they have more workers?

2. Do I need to wait until the first super is full before I add another and when I add it do I put it on top or in between the brood box and the super?

3. Should I learn to be more patient?

Thanks

 

[VickyLynn]

I'm not in Florida, so for what it's worth . . .

1) Harvest the full frames of honey. Replace with drawn comb if you have it, foundation, or extract the honey and put the wet frames back in. If you don't have enough frames to extract, save them in a sealed plastic bin or in the freezer until you have enough.

2) If your are not taking the full frames, add a new super underneath the full one. Seed it with some partial frames from the super on top.

3) Yes. Always a good idea. But, in beekeeping, don't procrastinate.

 

[JWPalmer]

Sounds like the bees have limited their brood space by putting their honey frames too close to the brood. My understanding is that you have one deep and one super. The deep in each hive has 6 solid frames of honey leaving only four frames for the brood. The super above is partially drawn on one hive and untouched in the other.

This is what I would do (similar to VL's advice),. Leave the supers in place, but do not expect them to get drawn completely or filled this year. Put one partially filled honey frame in positions 1 & 10. Extract any other frames if capped. See how big the brood nest is. Push those frames next to each other and put an undrawn frame on either side. Fill the remaining spaces with whatever you have. My feeling is that the hive is simply not strong enough to get a good harvest and you need to concentrate on getting brood raised. Depending on how long the mangroves and other vegetation is flowering, they may manage to get the supers drawn. But right now, get the lower box full of brood. Using a single deep, you should have at least four frames mostly capped, two of larvae/capped, and one of mostly eggs. Good luck.

 

[mjbeefriends]

Thank you Vicky and JW, I took your advice and have more brood frames.