hive sizes

[sherwood]

Why not do a Bailey transfer put a conventional national BB on top fill it with smith frames and foundation in the top box with the queen and a super with syrup above, wait 24 days and all brood will be hatched and brood will be in the right sized frames to move. If you want to speed it up slightly in terms of egg laying take one or two frames of fully drawn comb of national and saw the lugs shorter on these and put them upstairs with the queen and she can continue laying.
If you want to standardise on frame size to smith size which is national with shorter lugs cut 2 battens the width of the difference betwwen the two lug sizes and put them into the national BB and then cut down the now cleared national frames and you have interchangeability of frames between the 2 type of hive.
Dont you just wish that fella you bought them from on e-bay had correctly advertised them at the outset. I spotted the wernt national at the the beginning and notified them of this but he didnt correct the add.

 

[burch]

ok i have tried without success to get my bees up onto my smith frames. i placed a crown board on top of my national brood box followed by my smith broad box full of frames and foundation. on top of this i placed a miller feeder and feed the bees a sugar syrup soloution. they have still not drawn the comb in the top brood box any ideas on what i can do?

Will it be possible for me to place the smith brood box on the base then the national crown board followed by the national brood box. my thinking is the bees will then need to go out via the bottom entrance and hopefully draw the frames.
My question is will this work???

 

[Poly Hive]

First thing is, is your foundation stale? Might be worth taking it off and warming it with a hair dryer.

I would myself put an adaptor plate of plywood on and give them a complete hole to go up through.

Personally I prefer frame feeders. However you have what you have and so refresh it and lets see

PH