Bees focusing on supers after splits

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House Bee
Joined
May 20, 2009
Messages
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Location
SE Scotland
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
6-8
Something I've seen on and off over the years, and never found a good solution for, so I thought I ask what the rest of you do in this situation...

Afer completing a split (and this seems to happen for me more with Snelgrove than with Pagden) the bees seem to focus on working the supers, often as a tall thin 'vertical' hive. All the flow coming in gets taken upstairs and stored, but they don't draw out any foundation in the brood box. Very quickly the queen fills the few drawn frames that are initially provided, then goes off lay, leaving a relatively weak colony with a ton of honey above them. It's only when the stores are capped that they seem to switch to brood comb, at which point they're behind on building up for the summer flow.

I've often seen this accompanied by half-hearted attempts at supersedure (single QCs that are later abandoned) - as if they know the queen isn't laying enough, but ren't clued up as to why this might be the case!

I've thought about taking the supers off for long enough for the frames to get drawn out, then chuck them back on to get them finished, but I don't like the idea of having to store partially full wet supers.

Any other ideas on how to avoid this behaviour and prevent the interruption in brood laying that it seems to cause?
 
Could it be because that side of the split has all the old bees who are good at foraging but not the nurse bees.
E
 
Could it be because that side of the split has all the old bees who are good at foraging but not the nurse bees.
E

I think that might have something to do with it - however the last colony I saw this in (today) had gone through the full set of snelgrove door rotations to bleed down bees - though that obviously still only bleeds flying bees, not young nurses, and with the rain we've had all week maybe less than expected.

That does suggest that manually moving some young bees from the top box downstairs could help, but then the top box has an emerged but unmated virgin, and finding those is never fun, so you'd risk moving her by mistake!
 
In an apiary restructure aimed at producing new colonys the "cone" or
pyramid of he broodnest is allowed (encouraged) to expand beyond
the single FD.
When done the boxes are splitoff enmasse, palletised and moved out.

For the individual at home playing with a few colonys it is the skill and
trained eye used to nominate which frames with what bees get split
away to a new box onsite, the parent moved out.

When more efficient methods to generate new colonys through
"Splits" turns up...?... wake me up.
/smiles/

Bill
 
So in the end I decided to clear out half the supers - leaving them one for backup stores due to the ongoing rain. I've moved the other supers up to the top box, which has a higher proportion of nurse bees who should be able to finish them off.

I did consider shaking some of the young bees downstairs, but didn't want to risk accidentally transferring the unmated queen.
 

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