Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => EQUIPMENT USAGE, EXPERIMENTATION, HIVE PLANS, CONSTRUCTION TIPS AND TOOLS => Topic started by: filmmlif on August 08, 2004, 09:31:30 pm
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need some advice...i bought 2 established colonies that each have one deep and two supers. the 2 supers have both brood and honey. i want to replace the 2 deeps in each colony with a deep because the deeps are easier to maintain. any suggestion on how to do it without losing honey and brood from the supers?
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oops..i meant i want to replace the 2 supers with a deep because the one deep is easier to maintain. thnx in advance.
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oops..i meant i want to replace the 2 supers with a deep because the one deep is easier to maintain. thnx in advance.
It is not clear, what you have?
deep and low too?
Of course you do not loose anything. Put the new deep to bottom. When honey comes in, they fill supers from top to down.
What you have then? 2 deep and 2 low or?
When you have brood in 2 supers, the next emty super or more space must be located between brood and honey.
Garadully new bees come out from comp and bees fill them with honey. It takes a month or so.
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you could move the supers to the bottom. They probably would finish the year storing honey in the deep and raising brood in the mediums. When they come out of winter, in all likliyhood, the brood chamber will be up in the deep, and the mediums on the bottom will be mostly mty. You could remove them at that time and add another deep on top.
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If your in no rush, then I would do what golf recommended, it would be the least work for both you and the bees.
If you want to get it done this year, I would put the empty deep between the current deep and the supers, making sure the queen is in the lower deep. Wait until the remaining brood hatches out of the supers, then place an inner cover over the two deeps, followed by an empty super and then the two supers with honey. Score any capped honey and then wait. The bees will move the honey out of the supers down into the deeps. When the super are empty you can remove them.
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robo/golf
thnx for wisdom...i'll give it a shot.
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Robo's suggestion is a good one. You could probably get some foundation drawn and a head start on next year by having them move the honey back down into the hive. Like everything else in beekeeping... there are alot of ways to get something done. Just a matter of deciding which way to go, then letting the bees make it happen.
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Robo's suggestion is a good one.
Thanks :D
But I must admit, if it were me, I would be using your suggestion and let the bees use their effort to continue collecting fall nectar and not just moving honey around.
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hehehehehe... lots of ways to get the same thing done. Just depends on what you want to have at the end. filmmlif, I'm kind of suprised. So many people are going to all mediums these days, I thought I was one of the last people around still stuck in deeps. Personally, I like them, but they can be a real wrestling match at the end of the day. I'm sure some of them go close to 80 lbs., and lifting them from the top of a four high colony.. umphhhhhhhh.
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Your in good company. I'm still in all deeps as well. Ya, it can get heavy, but nothing stops you from removing half the frames into another deep for moving. A plus for deeps is that it cuts down on extracting time.
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i think i'll place the supers below the deeps and replace the supers with deeps next spring...what do u think?
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Sounds like a plan :D
If by chance there is still some honey in them in the spring, then you can do the above inner cover trick to get them cleaned out.