Oxalic Acid with top supers...?

[Hebeegeebee]

Rose Cottage,
I think you maybe didn't do quite what the bee inspector was thinking as you have one super above the brood nest and one below it.

For what it's worth I would have kept one super under the brood, no queen excluder. If done early enough in the Autumn or late summer, the bees have the opportunity to move their broodnest where they want. And you can tricke the oxalic acid at this time of year. In the Spring I expect that you will find the brood in the brood chamber where it's warmest. Then is the time to take the super from under the brood chamber before the queen starts to lay in it.

I am a 'super under' man for the winter and with the 8 colonies I treated a few days ago all bar one were at the top of the hives.

I am sure that some beekeepers think I am barking mad with what I do but it makes sense to me!

Rest assured, most colonies will survive despite what we do to them!

Adam D

 

[RoofTops]

My pennyworth on all this is bees have kept their stores above the brood nest for the last few million years and seem to have done reasonably well. Putting the stores below the brood nest seems odd to me but providing there is no queen excluder I am sure they will survive, but one danger is if set up like this in September the bees will fill the brood chamber with ivy honey and the queen may have no where to lay. However, having a queen excluder, which I assume is metal, left in, cannot be right. It will be great big heatsink and the bees touching it will not be happy. Also, if the queen excluder is left in come the spring when the queen is looking for somewhere to lay the only place will be the super below, which she cannot reach.

I am sure we have discussed this before - take out your queen excluders!

 

[RoseCottage]

All,
Many thanks for your thoughts and advice. If I am honest I have not fully understood all of them with perfect clarity.

I have removed the Queen excluder (which is metal).

When the bee inspector visited he thought that the brood chamber was full of supplies and that with the lower super full as well and that they had enough.

At the time my girls (as I prefer to see them) were still very high in number and still foraging on a flow. They were a little cramped for space so I added another super.


I guess that after the bee inspector visited I just wanted to ensure they had more than enough food for their, and my, first winter. So I fed them additional sugar syrup which they stored in the upper super.

I then stupidly put on the excluder thinking that the bees would stay with the queen and fetch food when they needed it and that I didn't want her laying eggs in a super in spring.

When I removed the excluder today the bees were all lower down in the brood box (or perhaps in the lower super) and just a couple came out to investigate me.

 

[RoseCottage]

I also treated them with Oxalic acid which I got from Thornes this morning. It was colder than the ideal but we are about to enter another week of freezing weather and snow. I wanted to treat them as soon as possible as I don't want to leave it too late and I don't want to open them up more than once if I can help it.

Lastly, someone has tried to send me a private message, thank you, but the system will not display it properley so perhaps you could send it again,


All the best,
Sam.

 

[BKF Admin]

Hi Sam,the private message was I expect the same as many others got and I removed,it was spam,nothing to do with beekeeping.

Good to hear you have removed the QE and treated your bees.
Looks like they are in a good way now and ready for spring

 

[RoseCottage]

All,
I recently looked in the girls to see how much food they had. I only looked at the top box but it still was mainly full of capped supers so I have assumed all is OK food wise. There were a fair amount of bees in the top super and many girls were out flying when it was 8ish degrees (so many I was surprised).

How/when should I begin reconstructing my hive back into the normal Spring configuration. I am wondering when I remove the supers?

So far I have not checked the bottom super or the BB as I wouldn't wish to interfere at this time of year.

I have decided to try and move them to a deep BB this year and am researching the way ahead,

All ideas welcome,

All the best,
Sam