[longarm]

2 deeps full of brood and honey, etc.
tried putting a shallow on top with an excluder in between (6.14.06). bees would not build comb in shallow.
tried removing the excluder (6.19.06).. still no comb building 11 days later.

so I have put the shallow in between the 2 deeps in hopes that they will start drawing it out and then i can put it back on top again (without excluder).
a little weird.. but what do you think will happen??

[ July 04, 2006, 07:54 PM: Message edited by: longarm ]

 

[cphilip]

What kind of foundation is in the Shallow super?

What kind of flow is going on there in Oregon?

 

[King bee apiary]

No flow no comb.The only way would be to feed 1:1 but then you run the risk of getting sugar syurp in your super.

 

[longarm]

duragilt in the shallow.
peak flow here now (blackberries).

 

[longarm]

duragilt in the shallow.
peak flow here now (blackberries).

 

[R.L. Bee]

I faced the same problem earlier this year and was told to do the same thing you are doing but i didn't so I don't know how it will work. As I said I didn't do any thing and they finally went up and started on there own. I read also to spray the foundation with sugar water to draw them up.or use a frame of honey or drawn comb to draw them up but I didn't have ether.

 

[RAlex]

Usually if there is a flow on , and they have honey stored in the upper deep they will draw out the super and store honey there. If they dont have a lot of honey in the deep an open drawn comb they will lay eggs sometimes above the deep. I dont care for queen excluders as they often dont like to go thru it until they have to. Even if they put eggs in the super after the eggs hatch they will backfill it with honey ...I think the importantt thing is to make sure they have room to expand or they will get crowded and might swarm late...Rick

 

[Ross]

Hard to bait them up when you have mixed comb sizes. I would just move a drawn frame up there, but I'm all mediums. You might try moving a deep frame up and letting it hang through down into the empty slot it came from. They will probably draw comb on the bottom of it, but you can scrape that off later.

 

[iddee]

Patience....When the nectar comes in, they will make a place to store it.
Until then, they don't waste resources building comb they don't need.

Baiting and manipulating may make them build comb faster, but it will not increase the honey flow.

 

[Neubee]

With all the hot, dry weather we have been having there is somewhat of a dearth. If we get some rain that should help.

 

[wade]

Hey longarm,

The blackberry flow here in Eugene is pretty much done. I see a few old flowers but mostly green berries. My colonies smaller than a full deep got their entrances reduced today to pre-empt robbing. The bees are busy with something and maybe I jumped the gun, but I can tell you from observation that the blackberry flow here will be completely over by this weekend unless they can suck nectar from a dried up prickly stub with no petals or a green berry.

 

[longarm]

Andrew and Wade,
If the flow is over ... is that it for the season? When will you harvest honey (presuming that you do)?
The bees here seem to be very busy with.. something. I'll double check in a day or 2 to see what progress they have made.

 

[wade]

Hey longarm,

I'm going to pull my honey in two weeks on the weekend. I agree the bees are still very busy.

 

[longarm]

Exactly 4 days and 5 hours after I put the shallow in between the 2 deeps to encourage the bees, who had been reticent, to draw comb in the shallow...
EVERY FRAME IS DRAWN ON BOTH SIDES!
3 or 4 frames in the center are filling with nectar. However there are also quite a number of eggs (on a couple sides of center frames) so I am not sure what to expect now that I have reversed the shallow and the deep and put the shallow back on the top.
What do you think? Will they store honey now in the shallow?

 

[odfrank]

Don't allow your honey supers to be used for brood chambers. Pollen and coccoons is what feeds wax moth larvaes.

 

[longarm]

Oliver,
Yeah I wish I had moved the honey super back to the top a day earlier or so and thereby avoided the eggs in the comb.. oh well. Not sure what can be done about that now though.

 

[Curtis]

Move them up and let them hatch and don't do that again.
Lesson Learned
Curtis