Advice Please

[pargyle]

"The hive has so much stores that I feel confident that they will draw the new foundation in the BB"

It's not all about how much stores they have available ... you need young bees to create the wax for comb production and you won't have many young bees at this time of the year. They also need heat to draw comb and you have given them a difficult job to do with a big empty hive to heat ... as well as keeping the bit of brood you have in there warm.

I'd dummy them down and just give them a couple of frames either side of the frame of brood to work with and dummy the super down above the reduced brood area as well. Insulation to fill the rest of the space ... you might have been better off putting them in a poly nuc for a few weeks to start with.

I would not bother with the queen excluder - you don't need it and there's every chance that she would be left below if the cluster felt cold and headed up to where the heat was at the top of the hive in the super.

Don't think you should leave things as they are ...

Ps: I see JBM got to it before me ... totally agree ...

 

[Brian Bush]

Hi Pargyle and JBM
I took the risk of changing the comb as except for the small patch of brood it was entirely empty. Old and Dirty.
I put the QE above the heaviest super thinking the majority of bees and the queen were in there. She will be able to lay in there if Spring arrives I hope.

 

[Madge]

... I transferred one piece of old comb with brood to a clean BB and then carefully shook the bees into the box. ...

Hi Pargyle and JBM
I took the risk of changing the comb as except for the small patch of brood it was entirely empty. Old and Dirty.
I put the QE above the heaviest super thinking the majority of bees and the queen were in there. She will be able to lay in there if Spring arrives I hope.

Did you give them drawn comb or just foundation?

As Pargyle said, I think you should remove that queen excluder. It might be warm where you are - but things can change and I bet it's still cold at nights.

Kitta