Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: Pond Creek Farm on July 06, 2009, 11:41:59 pm
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I am trying to break up the questions my son and I thought up during our first inspection of a big hive. This is a hive of Russians that we started as a package April 1. They were given a deep of fully drawn comb with several frames of honey and pollen to start (last year's assets from dead hives). These bees have grown very well and are extremely gentle. They hardly objected at our deep inspection. The hive has two mediums on top of two deeps (and is ready for a third super). We wanted to harvest the honey as it was capped so that we could observe the differences between the honey as the year goes on. When we went in today, we thought the first medium would have capped honey for us to harvest. It did, on the outsides, but the box was a brood box. It was constructed with honey on 1, 2 and 10 and the rest were in honey on top and drone brood everywhere else. This drone brood was everywhere in the third box. I am curious if I created this issue by giving them fully drawn PF-100 in the deeps (thus only small cell) or if some hives are so strong that they need ore than the two deeps as brood. Have I made a mistake by combining small cell plastic in the brood boxes with foundationless in the supers? Is there anything I should do about it? When winter comes do I leave on the two deeps and the medium? I never expected to see more than two deeps in brood, and I have not read anything about what to do with such a hive. The honey by the way is exquisite, light and clear.
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can't answer you about the small cell. don't use it. however, on your super, chances are they will hatch out that brood and backfill the space with honey. even if they don't, as they reduce in size, you can take that super and harvest the honey later. good thought about the small cell causing them to lay drone brood in the super. i'll be interested to see how that question is answered.
as for a hive needing more than 2 deeps the answer is yes, sometimes. i don't know how long your flow lasts or how your weather goes, but this late in the year i would probably let them lay in the honey supers rather than adding another deep. for me, it would be to late. days begin to shorten and flow diminishes. brood rearing slows. can you pull some honey frames from your 2 deeps and replace with drawn frames? you can always add the honey frames back later.
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did the queen just move up to the 3rd box and not go back down to the 1st box ,, I mean has she been working 2 and 3 but not laying in the 1 st box ??? or is she laying in all three ????
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Good point. I went down as far as the second box. I did not pull frames from this box but I could seen capped worker brood and open brood in the second box. I was worried that I would accidentally kill the queen or anger too many bees. No worker brood in the third box (medium) but worker brood present at least in the second deep. I am ignorant of what is in the first deep.