Advice on a newly homed swarm please

[Mymwood]

To cut a long story short, I gave up keeping bees last year. I brought my empty hives home and had a buyer for them. I left them in my garden. Lockdown prevented collection and the sale fell through.

Fast forward a few weeks and a swarm moved in. They chose a varroa floor upon which was resting two honey supers and a roof. These supers have castellated metal spacers in them. I've watched the activity and it's busy so I decided to open it up. Three frames of brood in the upper super, 1/2 a frame in the lower. Plus lots of store. So, I guess I've become a beek again!

My question - on opening for a look I find that because these supers have metal castellated spacers for the frames (ie the spaces between frames are much more than a bee space), the bees are filling the spaces between. Opening an inspecting is a challenge. My aim will be to install a properly spaced broodbox which I have ready with undrawn foundation. So, do I put the brood box on now and if so where. Between floor and lower super? Between the two supers? Or above the two supers?

Or do I wait? If so, when might be the best time to encourage them onto a properly spaced brood box?

Thanks in anticipation,

Mart.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

put the supers above the brood box, they will then move down as they put stores in the top

 

[dn170221]

If possible put the brood box below one super, if you can fit all the used frames from the two supers in to one super. Just a thought, they only have one super to use before shifting to the brood box.

 

[Finman]

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It depends, how big the swarm is. How much it occupy frames.

New bees start to emerge after 4 weeks.

 

[ericbeaumont]

Mart,

Your job is to prepare the bees for winter and two supers will be plenty of space for them to get through. You could put a BB under but the chance of them drawing the lot is reducing by the day; if you do give it to them, feed syrup continuously until all is drawn unless you have a strong flow in Gwent.

Doesn't sound like there's a lot of brood; as Finman asked, are they strong in bees? The queen ought to have space to lay for at least the next six-eight weeks or the colony will not be strong enough. How you manage that depends on how many combs are crossed or bonded, but if the lower box is drawn and the queen is fed, she will lay.

You have the option to leave them as is until spring; when temps are up and bees are expanding, put the BB under (without a QX), wait until the BB is drawn and the queen is laying there, put her in that box, put on a QX and put the supers back on. After 24 days the brood in the supers will have emerged and the boxes can be removed; only option is to crush and strain the combs, but if you haven't fed syrup the honey can be eaten. If you fed syrup, the strainings can be fed back to the bees to help them draw BB comb.

Presume that they have varroa and treat. Consider putting them on a solid floor (or put in the varroa sheet) to increase nest warmth and so encourage wax production in the lower box.

Sounds like your castellated frames were too far apart. Trick is to start off on 11-slot castellations, extract the combs and put them back in on 10-slots; do the same the next year but fit 9-slots. By then you'll have fat combs with no wild in-between; I've had 4-4.5lbs of honey per frame from 9-frame boxes. Your current frames can be scraped and re-used.

 

[Mymwood]

Many thanks for your advice. I did as suggested and combined the frames from the two supers into one. (I hadn't been aware there were variations in the number of castellations - mine had 9!)

New brood box inserted below the super and within a few minutes the bees were behaving as it it had always been there.

Thanks again.

Mart.