Advice would be appreciated

[Herbalist]

I opened one of my hives today. Superficially it looks ok. Double Commericial brood box with a rather large colony and queen present. There is stacks of capped brood and some uncapped. However - there is almost no honey present. I have taken nothing from this hive all year. If this hive goes into winter like this they may not survive. I would feed but fear that this might just prompt even more egg-laying. Advice would be appreciated.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I opened one of my hives today. Superficially it looks ok. Double Commericial brood box with a rather large colony and queen present. There is stacks of capped brood and some uncapped. However - there is almost no honey present. I have taken nothing from this hive all year. If this hive goes into winter like this they may not survive. I would feed but fear that this might just prompt even more egg-laying. Advice would be appreciated.

The brood nest will contract substantially. They will make room for food to get them through. Plenty of room in a double box.
Unless they are Italians

 

[madasafish]

Feed 2:1 sugar solution.

 

[REDWOOD]

Basic beekeeping is you must make sure bees have stores all year.

 

[Eyeman]

I opened one of my hives today. Superficially it looks ok. Double Commericial brood box with a rather large colony and queen present. There is stacks of capped brood and some uncapped. However - there is almost no honey present. I have taken nothing from this hive all year. If this hive goes into winter like this they may not survive. I would feed but fear that this might just prompt even more egg-laying. Advice would be appreciated.

With double brood some colonies will continue to pack their stores into the supers especially if you reversed the brood boxes in July / August to keep capped brood tight against the queen excluder. Are your supers full?

 

[Herbalist]

The brood nest will contract substantially. They will make room for food to get them through. Plenty of room in a double box.
Unless they are Italians

Thx for that. It is interesting what you say about Italians. The bees (2 hives) were originally my brothers in Lancashire. They were supposed to be Buckfast, but they display none of the Buckfast characteristics (except perhaps a large colony). They were so aggressive that he could not keep them in his location so I had to strap them up and bring them to Nottingham to deal with. I split the most aggressive hive and re-qeened both splits. This post is about the untouched hive that is still giving problems.

The bees were bought in spring as an overwintered nuc. They came complete with wax moth larvae. (I was NOT impressed). They have been nothing but problems ever since. One hive tried to rob the other and there was a mass fight. They left dead bodies all over the lawn.

It does not take a rocket scientist to work out that the dealer (I hesitate to call him a breeder) has probably been taking a F1 or F2 Buckfast Queen and free-mating her - but still marketing her projeny as "Buckfast". It is a roll of the dice what genetics are in there - but you are probably right about Italian genes. I will never use that supplier again. He's a "make-a-Buck-fast" seller.
Meanwhile I will feed 2:1 as Madasafish suggests and see what happens. I will definitely re-queen in spring. (The buggers stung my hand through two pairs of gloves - kid leather and rubber. I did not think that that was possible).

 

[Herbalist]

No supers. There are still undrawn frames in the double brood box.

 

[mbc]

Requeen would be my advice.
Commercial boxes are great in good years but after three years of no settled period of high pressure in July I've decided to sell mine off as my bees don't make a huge nest so most of my honey seems to stay in their broodbox (most annoying) whereas with national broods more is pushed up into the supers, and that's single commercial broods.
Anybody wants to buy lots of colonies in commercial boxes pm me as the decisions made and they'll be priced to go, ~£80 a colony.