National Brood to Commercial Brood

[Andy Fotheringham]

Last year I was fortunate to be given a strong colony in a national brood. All the kit I had built was commercial so we put a commercial brood on top with foundation. By the end of last season we had got 8 frames of capped honey/syrup and a couple of drawn frames, all ready for this season. Now want to get the brood up into the commercial box. Did an inspection recently of the top commercial brood in the hope that the queen had started to move up there. No brood found just the capped stores. Did not venture into the bottom brood. I was hoping to encourage them to move up so that I can put an excluder on and eventually lift out the national from below. Is the reason that the queen has not moved because the commercial brood is full of capped stores? Should I remove some of the capped frames from the middle and replace with drawn comb plus some foundation? Should I also give them some syrup to assist in drawing out any new foundation. I am thinking that getting them to move up would be the simplest solution to free up the national brood. For those of you that are thinking why did he do it this way, I had the promise of a commercial nuc that fell through and then a kind offer of the national colony which I couldn't refuse. I do have lots of spare kit ready for any manipulation required. All comments and suggestions appreciated.

 

[Mike a]

I'm sure some one will correct me if I'm wrong, but just take the National frames with the colony on them and put them in the commercial chamber. You will have a larger than normal bee space to the side of the National frames but this can be packed out until the colony expand sideways onto the other commercial frames then simply remove the Nationals frames as and when.

I wouldn't feed any more if they already have plenty of stores in the commercial frames, just bruise the cappings. No harm in adding one or two more frames with foundation but it depends how many commercial frames you have drawn out and filled with stores. Ideally you want the queen to move onto empty drawn commercial frames so place these next the the national frames and any national frames with stores move them to the side so the queen can get to the empty commercial frames without crossing over national frames with mostly stores on them.

Hope this makes sense...

 

[susbees]

No idea if all commercials are created equal or not but we made the "mistake" of doing an AS into a National last season as we'd run out of boxes and, similarly to the OP, we put a commercial brood box on top hoping that they would go up for the winter during autumn feeding.

First inspection today and the bottom National is neatly filled out as a des res for the queen with just the start of stores going up into the Commercial. National frames are too short for our Commercials so need bent tin adaptors to loop over adjacent commercial frames plus bits of dummy board to stop extensive brace combing and I don't think it's worth the effort really.

HOWEVER be interested to hear if anyone knows of an off-the-peg convertor system that works as we're going to have to find one for our II'd queens next year as part of the Bee Improvement Group (moving up from, yep, National nucs and we aren't the only apiary going to face this). Meanwhile we still have a version of the OP's problem to sort out here. Might just wait til they put some brood "up top" first...

 

[susbees]

Spot the blunder in this lot and I'll get my coat...as it won't let me edit it!!

 

[CliffDale]

I posted this not long ago and got some good suggestions.

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8432&highlight=cliffdale

 

[Mike a]

Spot the blunder in this lot and I'll get my coat...as it won't let me edit it!!

You have Langstroth's not Commercials?
Hence why the National frames wont fit...

 

[susbees]

Nah, the boxes were t'other way round, comercial on the bottom. No excuse cept I was out of commission from late September so something went awry. Anyhow, rest stands, frames won't fit, anyone know of a pre-made cleanable extender/dummy thingy for the ends?

 

[tonybloke]

dead easy to make, look in Hooper guide to bees and honey.

 

[DanBee]

The problem appears to be that with the combs full of stores, there is nowhere for the queen to lay, hence she has not moved up.

A commercial deep full of honey weighs about 7lbs, so with 8 of these you have 56lbs in the commercial box alone. You could easily afford to extract four of those frames, giving you 7 empty combs in total; arrange these in the middle of the box with foundation then remaining stores at outside and the queen should be much happier about moving upwards.

With the amount of stores they have, even with taking half out, I don't think they need any more syrup unless the weather turns foul. A common but understandable mistake is to feed too much and leave no space for the queen to lay in.