Making more space for queen to lay

[StephenT]

One of our hives has a shed load of bees, a newish queen (from the Demaree they were on), no signs of swarming yet and has pretty much run out of laying space. It has 9 frames of brood in the top brood box (the other 2 are stores) but in the lower brood box there does not seem to be much space to lay as there are 6 or so frames with pollen and/or honey stored, a couple of incomplete frames of brood and 3 or so frames of poorly drawn foundation that we put in some time back. Appreciate I should have originally put the foundation in the top box, but now to give them more space I was thinking of moving the frames of capped brood down to the middle of the lower box and replacing them in the top box with the poorly drawn or fresh foundation. Would involve taking some frames out of the bottom box. Does this sound sensible or are there other ways of providing more space to lay? Want to avoid triple brood really.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

the foundation (and some drawn comb) should be in the bottom box with the queen - if they are packing that with stores then it sounds to me like you're not giving them enough space above the brood box.
You need to put the sealed brood in the top box and swap it for fresh sealed brood in the bottom as the brood in the top emerges
If you were trying to put poorly drawn foundation from a previous disaster in the box with the queen to save cash then remember part/poorly drawn foundation from the previous year tends to get smeared with propolis and such and very unlikely the bees will draw it.
Packing more brood in the bottom does not sound sensible at all.

 

[drex]

Sounds like you have left it a bit late, but you could try a simple reversal of the Bb's. Did mine 2 weeks ago. Find it very useful to delay swarming. They soon rearrange and shift some of the honey up into the supers

 

[StephenT]

it’s not on a Demaree now as that was taken down about 3 weeks ago when we decided to let the hive have the new queen they had made during the Demaree and we took out the old queen.

Most the stores in the bottom BB is pollen rather than honey and the poorly drawn foundation there originates from earlier in spring when we expanded the dummied down brood boxes and also when we took out frames and made a nuc with the old queen a few weeks back. There's plenty of super space now although a few weeks back they were backfilling heavily but most of that has been moved up now.

 

[ericbeaumont]

6 or so frames with pollen and/or honey

Take out 3, put in new foundation, then swap the boxes.