Too late for a brood comb change?

[BeeSpace]

Need a bit of advice re a hive I've collected today, if anyone can spare the time please. I'm giving it a couple of days to settle and will then go through it fully on Monday.

It's single brood, two full supers and a super they're working on. Bursting with good natured bees. Queen is apparently unmarked and there's a squillion bees in there, so I'll mark her if I see her, but it'll be an as-and-when activity rather than a concerted effort to find her, unless I have to.

This colony are proplis champs - everything is stuck together. The crown board is stuck to the roof (preumably with brace comb) and I think there's some comb under the mesh floor. The previous owner hasn't had time to manage it too often this year.

If possible, I'd like to change out the brood comb as I don't know how old it is and there is some brace comb and a lot of honey in the brood box. Is it too late for a bailey comb change or similar? I'll leave it to next season if that's best, but I kind of want to give it all a fresh start!

Second question, if I take the two full supers off, can I store them (taped up, in the shed) and then give them back for winter stores to this colony and my other (which I've had for a couple of weeks and is a nuc gradually filling out a brood). I'm not clear on whether feeding honey to a different colony is a big no-no due to potential disease transmition or only a guide - this new colony seemed healthy from what I could see on the couple of brood frames I managed to pull when I viewed it, but will know more after a full check on Monday.

Thanks for reading - sorry it was so long!

 

[Walrus]

I hate that Bailey comb change thing. Don't know why you want to change comb, but IMO the best way is just to pull out the comb you don't want & put in a foundation frame (put it just at the edge of the brood nest). You can scrape brace comb off and move honey frames to the sides (remove if too many). Make sure all frames correctly spaced to reduce the likelihood of more brace comb building.

The queen needs space to lay so if you have lots of brood frames with honey in swap them out for foundation one at a time, but foundation goes at the edge of brood. Once it is drawn queen will lay in it.

Regarding the supers, if you are using them for winter stores why not just leave them where they are? Saves any risk of robbing. Again IMO, you can move a super from one hive to another, no problem.

 

[taurus]

If there are plenty of bees then with the current weather I'd simply put another brood box on there. I did that to a colony two weeks ago and they've drawn out the new box and filled it with eggs, brood and honey. Leave them like that and then remove the lower box early next year.

 

[Swarm]

I'm with Taurus, in two weeks one of my colonies have drawn and filled two brood boxes, one fully capped and the other partially.
Do this, let them get on with things and consider removing the supers later on, for yourself. They have weeks still to collect their Winter supplies and double brood should be plenty for them to over Winter.

 

[BeeSpace]

Thanks for the advice - right, I've sat and made up a dozen brood frames while watching the footy, so I'm all set. Second brood box it is, unless I see anything on Monday that makes me think otherwise.

Looks like I'll be attending Thorne's sale for more equipment again this year!