Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: ramdino on March 10, 2013, 05:05:07 pm
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Checked on my bees today. They are a colony that swarmed into so foundation-less supers last spring. Git them and moved them 2 weeks ago. The plan was to put a deep on top of the two supers and let them move up and populate the new hive and then once they had gotten established there to put a queen excluder under the deep let the brood hatch and then pull the two supers and cut out the wild comb. Went to look at them today. I have been feeding them. about 3 qts so far and they are taking in pollen. They have not moved up into the deep with the foundation at all. There were a few frames with bees walking on them bu they have not started drawing the comb yet. In few small spots they had robbed foundation. Should I try a different methodology or am I just impatient or what. They supers seem jam packed with bees but they don't look like they care a thin in the world about the new foundation. It is wax foundation.
Also saw so white spots next to some dead bees on the top of the iner cover. Is that an issue?
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For the most part, yes you are just impatient (I tell ya what, I think most of us are!). 3 quarts in 2 weeks of feeding only produced a frame of brood. It takes time for the hive to build up numbers strong enough to move up to the next box. Since you said they were robbing wax from above, then they are not in a strong enough nectar flow to draw new wax yet. Give it time and keep the feeder on, they should move up and start drawing wax as they get strong enough and need the space to expand.
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Put your brood box on bottom. Remember the honey over brood rule. The queen will move down with the brood as they take in honey and store it on top.