Rotation of Deeps at end of winter

[Dr. B in Wisconsin]

Hello
I live in Wisconsin and next week it is going to be in the 50's unusual for Wisconsin
I have one hive, 2 deeps with a super on top. I have seen the bees at the top of the super coming out to check things out.
My question is since they have been at the top for quite awhile my guess is they have consumed most of the honey stores at the top.
Would it be wise to rotate the super to the bottom and put one of the two deeps which probably has more stores on the top??
There could be a good cold snap left here in Wisconsin and I don't want to get caught with the bees in an area with little stores left it there is a cold snap.
Thanks for the input

[bwallace23350]

I have always heard that bees work themselves from the bottom to the top so I am not sure if rotating would help. I might put on a top feeder.

[BeeMaster2]

Put some fondant or moistened sugar on top.
Jim

[Acebird]

Before you start moving things around make sure you know where the stores are

[Beeboy01]

It's still a little early to rotate the supers in your area. If the bees are in the top super the bottom one is probably empty and the bees have moved out of it. I wouldn't do anything major with the hive till it warms up more in your area. I have had luck feeding sugar in late winter by placing a piece of paper towel or newspaper on the top of the frames and then pouring 1 or 2 pounds of sugar on it. The moisture the bees produce gets picked up by the sugar and helps the bees use it.

[cao]

I don't rotate boxes so I can't advise on that.  If the bees are near the top, I would assume that they are almost out of stores(unless they missed some as they made their way to the top).  Check the weight of the hive and if light I would feed dry sugar on top of the frames.  This could be in the form of fondant, a sugar brick or the mountain camp method.  It was warm today and I had to add some more sugar bricks to three of my hives.

[splitrock]

Yeah, it's a little early for switching boxes in Wisco yet.

Fortunately we were near 60 here in south dakota the other day, rare for February. I took entrance reducers off right away in the morning hoping the hive would warm up sooner so the bees could get out en-masse longer, and maybe do some more house keeping easier. It worked, and I was pretty happy with the amount of hives surviving yet, (65 out of 70) and the amount of bees I saw.

I had put dry sugar on top of all my hives before winter and gave it a spray. They were two deeps and I left a medium super on most them as well. When I opened them up checking their stores the other day, I found several hives that had cleaned up the sugar, but still had frames full of capped honey. Many had been into the sugar to some degree and still had stored honey. I thought that it was kind of strange using the sugar when they still had good honey. I hadn't seen that before, Is this common?

[BeeMaster2]

They may bee just removing it. I had had bees remove it from the top and dump it into the bottom tray.
Jim

[splitrock]

Well I did take a stick and help clean out some lower entrances and didn't see any sign of that. But it sounds like we have some nice temps coming again soon and I will investigate further and see if that's the case.

[Michael Bush]

IF I happen to be down to the bottom box and IF there is no brood in the bottom box and it's mostly empty, I probably would put it back on top so I can see when it's full.  If it has brood in it, I would leave it alone.  I never go into a hive with the intent of swapping boxes.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslazy.htm#stopswitching

[BeeMaster2]

I moved a hive into a flow hive yesterday. The bottom box was mostly empty and most of the empty frames were black comb. I took advantage of this and removed the black comb. I use one frame of black comb in each swarm trap (the rest are empty frames and the black comb is on the side so that I can remove it as soon as they are established).
If this is the case it is a good time to remove it from service.
Jim