Advice on a full ish box of bees!

Andrew2000 · Mar 29, 2019

I took a peek inside my hive today for the first time this year and to my great delight, it is packed full of bees, brood and stores. I decided to 'under-super' for the winter on local advice which meant a super full of drawn comb underneath the brood box.

I swapped the brood box and super back over today and there are only a few empty frames in the super which even has some brood in it!

I am planning on taking a few brood frames of stores out and relacing with undrawn comb just to give them some space and something to do other than swarm!

There brood box has a LOT of stores in it, is it likely that the bees will move the stores up to the super?

Dadnlad · Mar 29, 2019

Sometimes scoring the cappings of the stores then adding QX and super/s will encourage the little darlings to move said stores upstairs, or they will consume their stores - thus freeing up laying space

Finman · Mar 30, 2019

Dadnlad said:
Sometimes scoring the cappings of the stores then adding QX and super/s will encourage the little darlings to move said stores upstairs, or they will consume their stores - thus freeing up laying space

Qx is not a good idea. It limits the laying space. It does not help if bees do not consume winter food, and only move sugar from place to place.
It sound that you need second brood box with foundations. Uppermost brood, then foundation brood box and lowest sugar super. They consume sugar to draw combs.

You may take couple of brood frames in the middle of foundation box and couple foundations into one side of the brood box. Keep brood area solid.

Andrew2000 · Mar 30, 2019

Thanks for the advice. I think I’ll remove some of the stores for storage somewhere safe (!) and replace with undrawn foundation placed next to the brood. Hoping they will then use some of the winter stores to draw out the comb. Will leave them for a bit then and r-consider the ‘mixed super’ in a week or so.

I have seen people scoring the capping of stores - what does this do? Is it simply to expose it so the bees eat it or does it encourage them to move it elsewhere??