[Beezly]

I have double deep hive with 2 honey supers almost full but not yet capped. I just put a deep above these with drawn comb hoping for just honey in it. I am going to split in June and want to get away from feeding sugar water, it brings ants and they take over. if I can get the deep full this will give me at least 8 frames and possibly more if I can put on a second deep. I don't want to use an excluder. Thanks for any thoughts on this.

 

[JRG13]

You should be fine but you never know til you try.

 

[Michael Bush]

In my experience, if there is not enough drone brood in the brood nest, she will cross any amount of supers to lay some drones.

 

[wcubed]

The queen does not make that type of decision. She responds to the desires of her court/retinue. The "steering committee" know where cells are prepared for eggs. If it's 3 floors up, that's where they take her.

Walt

 

[Michael Bush]

>The queen does not make that type of decision. She responds to the desires of her court/retinue. The "steering committee" know where cells are prepared for eggs. If it's 3 floors up, that's where they take her.

I think that is accurate. They build the drone cells in the supers because the was is soft and they take her there to get them laid.

 

[Beezly]

Thanks all for the info.

 

[dfortune]

If she did lay a few drone eggs as others are saying I highly doubt it would be enough to worry about, and she certainly isn't going to move the brood nest over 2 supers full of honey. More likely, she'll begin laying in the super directly above the brood nest if anywhere.

 

[wcubed]

df,
What you describe is fairly accurate for the buildup period through swarm preps, but ends there. The colony with limited drone comb in the allocated space of the overwintering broodnest will often find drone comb in the honey supers, and recycle drone brood there well into harvest time in late summer.

Walt