Bridget
02-09-2017, 03:50 PM
The last question thread got taken over by IMHO and such stuff so l have a new question
Into bees today to check if any needed another super. Having a bee house we have a bit of a height restriction - 2 broods and 3 supers max. Anyway, supers all in the process of being capped, some angry trapped drones above the QE but progressing nicely and so no new supers needed. Decided to check the top brood boxes just to see what was going on. Well every single bit of it stuffed with stores, some capped some not but where there was the odd patch of capped brood, very little to speak of, we could see they were filling the cells with nectar just as soon as the brood emerged. Our concern is that she will have, or soon be, running out of space to lay. We can't use another brood box because there is no room height wise and anyway we have run out. Only thing we could think of doing was quickly making up some brood frames and taking out some frames of capped honey in the top brood box. Two colonies are like this and one not so bad.
Bees are flying like the clappers, busier than I have ever seen them so bringing in more heather nectar as we speak. So did we do the right thing and what would anyone else have done in the same circumstance. Will they draw that foundation in time for her to lay?
Admittedly we did not go down to look at the bottom brood box as the top one was too heavy to lift.
When, as innocent beginners, we built the bee house, 4 years ago, we never envisaged having to go to 3 brood boxes, up here in the highlands.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
Into bees today to check if any needed another super. Having a bee house we have a bit of a height restriction - 2 broods and 3 supers max. Anyway, supers all in the process of being capped, some angry trapped drones above the QE but progressing nicely and so no new supers needed. Decided to check the top brood boxes just to see what was going on. Well every single bit of it stuffed with stores, some capped some not but where there was the odd patch of capped brood, very little to speak of, we could see they were filling the cells with nectar just as soon as the brood emerged. Our concern is that she will have, or soon be, running out of space to lay. We can't use another brood box because there is no room height wise and anyway we have run out. Only thing we could think of doing was quickly making up some brood frames and taking out some frames of capped honey in the top brood box. Two colonies are like this and one not so bad.
Bees are flying like the clappers, busier than I have ever seen them so bringing in more heather nectar as we speak. So did we do the right thing and what would anyone else have done in the same circumstance. Will they draw that foundation in time for her to lay?
Admittedly we did not go down to look at the bottom brood box as the top one was too heavy to lift.
When, as innocent beginners, we built the bee house, 4 years ago, we never envisaged having to go to 3 brood boxes, up here in the highlands.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro