No room for Q to lay - due to honey & pollen

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Lesley Hoppy

House Bee
Joined
May 26, 2011
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Location
cheshire
Hive Type
WBC
Number of Hives
2
Inspected a really bad tempered colony today. Newly mated queen, laying where she can - but so much of the brood box (14x12 in a WBC) is filled with honey & pollen.
I have 3 supers on - none of which are full - and I am sure the bad temper of the bees was because of the above ...... Does anyone have any advice or experience of this?
 
Why 3 supers if non are full?
 
Give a brood box of foundations between recent brood and excluder.
That prevents well swarming.

It seems that you have good flow and honey is so moist that they cannot cap honey ... yet.

Bees use brood frames too to store nectar, when flow is strong. But they draw now quickly foundations. Best time to draw them.

Do you know, from where the flow comes?
 
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You only add Another super if one is near to full, So as Irishguy asks why have you got three on?
 
Why 3 supers if non are full?

The number of boxes depends on the amount of bees. Even if you have not at all honey in the hive, bees may need 4-5 boxes.

When bees fill Super so that one box will be capped, they need 2 supers more where they dry up nectar. If all supers are capped, the hive will swarm very quickly, if not swarmed already.

Do not wait that svereal supers are capped. You may loose your bees in swarming.
 
You only add Another super if one is near to full, So as Irishguy asks why have you got three on?

I would follow Finman's advice to add additional space for ripening rather than this but it's your call.
You could swap a honey/pollen frame for a drawn empty one if you have it.
Cazza
 
The reason for the 3 supers is simply that I was worried about them storing in the BB so gave them more storage space - 2 of the supers are pretty full.
 
The reason for the 3 supers is simply that I was worried about them storing in the BB so gave them more storage space - 2 of the supers are pretty full.

No. Give more brood space. Bees need it just now. Do not force bees move stores during flow. It does not succeed.

If your diagnose is need of laying space, give laying space.

Guys, gues what , how I can get in 6 weeks 150 kg honey into one hive ! I give 3 boxes foundations to be drawn. It keeps them busy and keep their working motivation high.

Me and my friends say, when flow is best, all furnitures will be finish. And you must get new ones into hives. So simple. This happens every year and you must give to hives every year new foundations. Otherwise you will be in trouples.
 
Don't worry too much about queen excluders at the moment. Put one of your supers underneath your brood box, then the brood box, then the queen excluder then another super on the top. If the queen needs to lay they will build out the bottom super to give her room. Later in the year you can always reduce to one brood box again but at the moment that would be my advice. If they are stroppy bees though they will get really cross when you lift the brood box off the floor to complete the manoeuvre so go dressed for combat!
E
 
Don't worry too much about queen excluders at the moment.
:iagree: Bees will put fresh nectar anywhere they can so they can go and collect more while they can. Unfortunately, this is often in the brood box.
For a long time, we have been enouraged to add supers one box at a time and only when 70-80% of the super frames has been filled. This has led to swarming because the queen becomes honeybound and can't lay. Unless you have lots of drawn combs that you can swap out filled brood combs, this inevitably leads to conjestion in the brood area. If you remove the queen excluder, the queen can move up and lay in the supers (which you can later rotate with the brood box so you can extract the deep combs). It takes 21 days for a worker to emerge after the egg is laid, so, if you rotate the supers back ontop of the brood box after you have extracted the deep combs they will back fill with honey (so long as it isn't too late in the season).
 
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