Filling the BB with stores

[jenkinsbrynmair]

bees will concentrate on getting stores as near as possible to the brood nest at this time of year - with the cold weather we had last month I noticed two colonies that had taken a lot of honey back, when there was forage available again had a half filled super on top,an empty super above the QX and they were busily packing in the stores in the brood chamber with hardly any bees in the super - far better to have your shallows nadired from now on.

 

[sbisme]

Observation over my years of beekeeping, some bees will abandon supers this time of year even though the supers are not full and concentrate on filling the BB with stores as more cells become available as the queen slows her egg laying rate. I found this particularly with black bees. I'm not to sure if this is a good trait but those colonies seem to come through the winter better.

Yeh these are a cast swarm of black bees in which it looks like the queen then mated with my Buckfast drones so a cross, my Buckfast hive have filled the super nicely in which I will be nadired later this week.

Thanks for all the replays