Double brood but no drawn supers

[Aledrinker]

Hi All, I have a double brood hive next to an OSR field but have only just got my super sorted as had to wait for new frames to arrive since the old super frames were full of thymol tainted honey from last year. I had left on lots of stores but they have not taken any where near as much as I thought they would yet I have 1 full brood of bees plus the other is 25% full,

I am worried they will fill the brood frames with OSR honey which will be hard to get to before it crystallises.

So my question is - if I put on the super now will it be too late for them to draw it out in time for the OSR ?

How long does a frame take a decent sized hive to drawn a super of foundation frames ?

Thanks again

 

[Midland Beek]

Blimey it is still only March. Do any of those OSR plants actually have flowers on? If so, is the weather that good bees are actually able to work it?

And why would you want to 'get' honey that the bees put in brood frames?

Bees don't draw out foundation for the fun of it. They make comb only when they need to put something in it.

By all means stick your super on sooner rather than later if your colony is strong.

 

[YorkshireBees]

Hi All, I have a double brood hive next to an OSR field but have only just got my super sorted as had to wait for new frames to arrive since the old super frames were full of thymol tainted honey from last year. I had left on lots of stores but they have not taken any where near as much as I thought they would yet I have 1 full brood of bees plus the other is 25% full,

I am worried they will fill the brood frames with OSR honey which will be hard to get to before it crystallises.

So my question is - if I put on the super now will it be too late for them to draw it out in time for the OSR ?

How long does a frame take a decent sized hive to drawn a super of foundation frames ?

Thanks again

I don't know about the state of the OSR in your area, where I am there are some single flowers but still a while off full bloom.

As Midland Beek said 'By all means stick your super on sooner rather than later if your colony is strong.'

A Super of foundation can be drawn out very quickly by a strong colony in good conditions however I would hardly say that it is good conditions both in terms of temperature and flow atm.

In my experience I would be worried that on a double brood the bees will fill up the (I assume) drawn comb in the BB's first before drawing the super.

With no drawn super comb there is no easy answer, this year is already proving to be a challenge for many different reasons. Colonies either are having to be fed due to low stores or are too full of winter stores!

Only option I can think of would be to extract the tainted honey / stores from your super comb and then reuse the comb.

 

[oliver90owner]

Think here the numder of cells available to the queen.

Assuming here that your hive is a double brood National (other formats will be different, of couse) there will be approx 100 000 cells if 11 frames and another 10k if 12 frames.

If peak lay-rate were 2000 egs per day (we have one on the forum claiming their queens have layed 5000 per day) it would take 50 days to use up all those cells - except the cells can be re-used about every 25 days! That means that even with a honey arch over the brood, there will be space to store honey for the longer term. Peak lay-rate would not be lasting anywhere near 50 days of course.

So it is fairly inevitable that there will either be 'permanent' stores in the boxes or wasted space.

I accept there will be some in my 14 x 12s and it is always a compromise situation. You may have wondered why a 'brood and a half' was, and still is, a popular choice of brood format for many.

Of course, historically, there was the 'June gap' when excess stores would have come in handy; nowadays the weather and flora seem less predictable. So it is down to the beekeeper to manage the bees as best possible.

Hope that gives you something to think about. Don't take the lay-rates quoted above as gospel - read up about it from those that have studied it closely, for more typical figures.

RAB

 

[drstitson]

they'll use the OSR nectar to draw comb as needed.

 

[BeeJayBee]

Blimey it is still only March. Do any of those OSR plants actually have flowers on?

Yes. I've seen several fields in full bloom.

If so, is the weather that good bees are actually able to work it?

No. With last night's hailstones and thunder, today they're staying indoors because it's too cold.

 

[jd101k2000]

In terms of 'how quick can a colony draw a super of foundation?'. Last year I had a nucleus in May. In mid-June I put on a super of foundation. Two days later they were all drawn (a flow had started). I would guess that with OSR they would be quicker (if that is possible).