Dealing with OSR honey setting in brood box

[Catrin]

I’m quite a new beekeeper (got my colony in July last year), please could I ask a potentially daft question?

My bees seem very hardy and have been out and about even in the awful weather we’ve been having in the North East. We had a few days a few weeks ago when OSR was in flower and the weather was OK.

I did an inspection at the weekend and found the brood box jam packed with honey and brood, but nothing at all in the supers. I had a poke at the capped honey in the brood box with my hive tool (upset some bees doing that – oops) and suspect some of it might be OSR honey because some of the stuff on the frames is starting to crystallise.

If it was on the super I would take it off straight away and extract it. What’s best to do when it’s in the brood box? Just leave it and hope they will deal with it, or replace the frames where I can see crystallisation starting with fresh ones?

Thank you for reading.

 

[drex]

Just because it is on a "deep" or "brood" frame, does not mean that you cannot take it off and etxract, provided there is no brood on that frame. Will your extractor handle a "deep" frame?

I suspect that by now it will have crystallised so that you cannot extract it anyway. Leave it for the bees. However do you have enough room for queen to continue to lay?

If not take some out - leave enough so that they do not starve - dependoing on weather and forage - and give it back to them instead of sugar syrup in Autumn

 

[enrico]

You have to get the bees past the QE. Take it off for a day, make sure the queen is back in the brood when you replace it, can your bees get through the QE? The margins for size are very small and the holes may be too small....it has been known. Put some drawn comb if you have it in the super...try every trick to get them to use it and then bruise any cappings in the bb so that they will hopefully move it to the super.
Best of luck
E

 

[drex]

I had thought of that enrico, but what is to stop the OSR honey acting as seed and causing the late summer honey to crystallise prematurely. I do not know the answer, perhaps someone might educate me.

The OP just says there is nothing in the super, not necessarily that it is devoid of bees.

 

[oliver90owner]

So you have deep frames with stores. If you can extract them, all well and good. Do not, as some seem to think happens, extract honey from brood frames (ie frames with brood).

One thing is certain, they are best removed from around the brood nest as the lack of laying space may induce swarming.

Personally, I put them in a box below the brood nest and they will move it up (hopefully to the super(s)).

Finman advocates spraying the frames with water to speed up the honey removal, but I would generally let them take their time about it. If capped, I would bruise some to encourage them to get it shifted.

If granulated, they are going to be slow to get it out, so returning them as a box below the brood nest is one way to get the job done. If the weather were hot (which it hasn't been (often) this year, I would not be averse to putting the odd frame above the crownboard as a means of getting it moved down. I don't do that because my crown boards are just that - a board.

Just remember that when moved the resultant super frames could well be prone to early granulation, especially if there is a lot moved into one super.

RAB

 

[Catrin]

Thank you all.

The brood box is looking pretty full so I will replace the two frames that look most suspicious with clean ones (they are just honey - no brood) and think about how I decide to deal with it. The honey is beautifully capped (except where I have been poking it).

There are usually some bees wandering around in the super, they just haven't got to work up there yet. They spent ages on only 5 frames in the brood box too before they suddenly expanded across the whole lot in 3 weeks, so I think they will get up there but only in their own time!

 

[Finman]

.
Your case tells that the colony was not big enough to occupy the super.
The amount of honeys is not big in the hive.

What I would do in this case is top give to the queen more laying area.
Put the super under the brood box that the queen gets laying space. When the colony is big enough to get third box,

1) then change the order of brood super and big brood

alternative 2:

2) put again first super over the excluder
- put a third super with foundations between brood super and big brood.
- take from brood super pollen framnes off and put them in the middle of foundation box.
- put capped brood over ecluder and larva frame under the EXC




.

alt
3) If I were you, I would not use excluder up to fourth box.

When hive is big enough, then collect honey super frames over the EXC and brood frames under EXC

 

[Chris Luck]

but what is to stop the OSR honey acting as seed and causing the late summer honey to crystallise prematurely.

It doesn't work like that unless well mixed which it won't be, I always have supers with some OSR along with the summer crop.

Chris

 

[Finman]

Thank you all.

The brood box is looking pretty full so I will replace the two frames that look most suspicious with clean ones (they are just honey - no brood) and think about how I decide to deal with it. The honey is beautifully capped (except where I have been poking it).

With 2 frames of honey you get only extractor greased.

Make first the hive bigger and then thinl about honey. But it is nice to hear that you want honey from hive.