I'll start by thanking again all of you for the time and thought you have put into my enquiry. I have now put the new brood box complete with entrance full of drawn wax under the old brood box the old entrance taken away a honey supper that has been on the old bb through out the winter with some of last years honey still present left on. The bees that came out when the bb was lifted off its base were very lively and all returned into the hive through the new entrance i didn't use smoke. The bees selling back into the hive quickly. To address some of the constructive criticism, firstly i haven't a honey spinner that will take commercial brood frames the old brood chamber placed nearly entrance to entrance seemed logical as i live very remotely and have no other hives, I did collect a substantial amount of this reclaimed honey in the supers put on the old brood box, well down on my previous years crop but that was expected with the amount of new wax they had made. I don't use qx as I've had problems getting the bees to go through into the supers but as soon as I took the Qx away all went well. 2 years ago I had 6 suppers on with not any queen excursions into the supers. As regards swarming as I said in my first responce when i first started my hives swarmed regularly, then I was keen to do things properly and inspected fortnightly for queen cells and sighns of any thing not right, taking out any unwanted queen cells which resulted in even more queen cells being produced then i was having the problem of the bees not going through the Qx as well. The swarms when first emerging always settling very close to their original hive before setting off on their adventures in all cases the swarms were collected and resulting in me multiplying my hives resulting in problems of to small a colony to overwinter. I have just one Commercial hive now that is very full of brood. I have a theory that because i'm using commercial brood chamber without a qx and keep stacking supers on whenever they start to fill the hive never runs out of space together with not going into the brood chamber disturbing there well being they do not swarm allowing the colony to get very large. I realise i'm going to get quite a bit of criticism for putting forward this analogy but I am here observing this happening through out the year. I will let you all know how this turns out as the bees are now wintering again with the outer covers on their new larger hive till the weather warms and drys up.
