Bursting with bees and brood but no swarming (yet)

[RogerJ]

Having united a Q- hive with a Q+ (which at the time was a bit slow in building up) it is now bursting at the seams with bees (or so it seems) with bees clustering in the underfloor entrance. There are 7 frames that are well covered with BIAS. I've added a super above a QE which the bees are starting to clean up and use. There are definitely no queen cells so no signs of swarming (yet!).

I can't see the queen (they started to get a bit feisty so didn't want to linger too long).

I was thinking of going to a double brood with a view to doing a split at some stage - is it worth doing that now to at least give the bees more space as well as having the super?

Thanks as always for any words of wisdom.

 

[maddydog]

Don't see why not, they're strong enough and the weather is set fair.

If the bees are often feisty then I'd source a better queen for the split when that time comes rather than let them raise their own from a grumpy q that was slow to get going.