More frames?

[Pansypots]

Hi, my nuc has now been in their new National for four weeks. Looking today I now have 4 frames of sealed/ unsealed brood and 4 frames of stores (heavy too). They have 3 frames left that they are now drawing out, 1 is started to be filled with stores and the other 2 are just wax at the mo. I’m now feeding them a 2:1 syrup and I’m putting in about 2lts every other day.
Am I going to need to another super with frames to keep them through the winter seeing the box is nearly full?
Thanks for your help.

 

[enrico]

You are in the middle! I.e. if you add a box on top then they may have spare space in there as the weather starts to turn which is not good. In theory a national full of food for the winter will last the winter but may need a feed of fondant in a long cold winter. However...... If you fill the present box with food where is your queen going to lay so....... What I would do is add a super or another brood box underneath the present brood box. If they need the space they can use it but if they don't the space will be in the cold area under the BB. They will be filling the brood box with stores which will be good but the queen may lay in the bottom box if she needs to. In the spring they will have vacated the bottom box if you want to remove it .
Bees store food from the top down so that in the winter they can eat it from the bottom up. The queen will lay as close to the top as possible, all based on heat retention. Hope that helps
E

 

[Ian123]

Hi i would not bother with another box no real point given the size of colony Simply push the unused frames in between store and brood you could do 1 each side of brood nest and rotate a new frame in or just spin existing as they start to use. I would also be tempted to slow down a little with the feed, you are in the barmy south and you have plenty of time to top up