Welcome, Guest

Author Topic: Bees filling up brood chamber?  (Read 2128 times)

Offline bayareaartist

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 76
Bees filling up brood chamber?
« on: April 10, 2006, 03:30:45 pm »
I have this hive. It was my first one and I think it swarmed and then the rains came, I use an upper entrance and well I ended up without a queen and the hive population was dwindling.
I put two frames of eggs and brood in the hive and they made queen cells.
I received a swarm and dumped it in.
The hive is down to one 9” deep now.
It sits on another box with foundationless frames. I hope they will build down and I can get the queen to go down onto the foundationless frames.

Now this is the problem. There was no queen in the swarm I added in and they are getting along fine now. But the bees are filling all the remaining cells with nectar and I am afraid when the queen emerges there will be no where for her to lay and then this group will abscond.

Any ideas? Comments?

Thank you,
Donn
Donn

Offline Finsky

  • Super Bee
  • *****
  • Posts: 2791
  • Gender: Male
Bees filling up brood chamber?
« Reply #1 on: April 10, 2006, 03:48:30 pm »
One box hive is difficult because bees gather it full of honey even in one week. Then it swarm again if queen have no room to lay eggs.

If you have bigger hives, situation is easy to handle.

If you get another 4 lbs swarm then it it is easy.

If you have nothing above, you should ecxtract capped honey.

If you give foundationless frames it is good at all neither to you or to your bees. Bees need to make wax douple to draw up their combs.

Online Michael Bush

  • Universal Bee
  • *******
  • Posts: 19833
  • Gender: Male
    • bushfarms.com
Bees filling up brood chamber?
« Reply #2 on: April 10, 2006, 09:52:03 pm »
Why not move some foundationless frames (one or two) into the middle of the cluster so they will start on those.
My website:  bushfarms.com/bees.htm en espanol: bushfarms.com/es_bees.htm  auf deutsche: bushfarms.com/de_bees.htm  em portugues:  bushfarms.com/pt_bees.htm
My book:  ThePracticalBeekeeper.com
-------------------
"Everything works if you let it."--James "Big Boy" Medlin