drawing out plastic foundation/too much brood?

[funbee1]

I started three hives in MI back in April and I'm using plastic foundation.The bees were quick to draw out the center fames but it took several weeks to expand toward the outside wall. One hive developed swarm cells so I removed the cells and added another box. They drew out the center four frames in less than a week and the queen had already filled it with eggs. So I traded the new drawn out brood filled frames with the empty frames in the bottom box, so the bottom box has 10 frames of brood. I then began rotating the outside frames in the 2nd box with the drawn ones from the center.

the original game plan was to have a deep brood box with a deep food box above it and then med. honey supers above that. But now I have two deeps full of brood and lots of bees. there are a few frames of honey but mostly she just keeps laying eggs. Am I going to end up with too many bees and not enough food stores to get them through winter?

Why don't they want to build in the two outside frames?W.as it a bad move to start rotating the frames to end up with 10 full frames?

Also, this hive was started with a package of bees that contained two queens. One in a queen cage(which was killed instantly upon release) and a marked one that was mixed in with the package(green dot 09?)

Still feeding with 1:1 sugar water with top feeders
thanks,scott

[yockey5]

Pray for a good flow and super, super!  :)

[Finski]

.
I suppose that you have summer in Minnesota. Hives do not need feeding.

Sounds that you have too much room to colonies.

One langstroth box needs 4 pounds bees to occupye the whole box.
If you have 3 pounds, take 3 frames off.

That way the brood hive is warm and they fill frames with brood.
Now they fill combs with syrup.

[Joe D]

I don't know about your weather, but if there is a pollen and or nectar flow you can probably stop feeding for a while.  If the 2 deeps are full then add a super keep a check you will probably be adding more.  Keep a check on there stores also.  Good luck with your bees.



Joe

[Vance G]

Your package had a queen from the hive shook to create the package.  She was theirs and the caged queen was an alien.  She is already two years old and if still laying well is a treasure!  It is early in the year and your bees should have lots of time to make lots of honey weather permitting.  You could take that marked queen and three frames of brood and let the populous colony you describe raise a new queen.  With all those numbers and your main flow coming on I assume, you should make a lot of honey gain a new queen and have a nuc to sell or winter and get a good crop to boot.

[funbee1]

Thanks for all the advice guys, that's what I love about the bee community, most guys are willing to help the new guy.

I thought about splitting them but figured there was no way a first year package would produce the opportunity for a split.

I have a bee club meeting in a week so I will see what the concensus is there.

thanks to all,

Scott

[BlueBee]

Yep, summer in Michigan, you really don’t need to be feeding the bees syrup.

2 deeps of bees is more than enough to survive our winters.  By fall they’ll start backfilling the brood nest (top deep) with nectar.  Not something to worry about now.  Right now, you want maximum # of bees.  More bees = more comb building = more foraging = more honey.  If you wanted to pull out a few frames and start a nuc now, you could.