Extra Queen

[Barnabus]

Hi:
I'm going to work my hives this Tuesday, These are the ones I posted about June 6th being honey logged. Well it seems as if I'm going to have a extra Queen. Can I take brood (capped and not capped) from two different hives and combine them in one nuc as a split? I know I have to put a frame with honey for them  to feed on. If so what proceedure would you recommend? Should I try to use three frames of brood?

I attended a local bee association meeting Thursday and someone recommended taking frames, with only honey, (that isn't copped) out of the deep box that is full of nothing but honey and putting them in the freezer and freezing them, to kill wax worm eggs, and then storing them in air tight bag to use as food for the bees this fall before winter. Has anyone heard of doing this? Will it work.

There was quite a bit of discussion about honey bound hives and most of the experianced beekeepers says that using two deep boxes for brood in this AREA will cause them to store honey in the top deep box when its really not needed then they end up going higher to, usually into the suppers, to build brood or they just simple slow down their reproduction.
Most all the beekeepers use just one deep and then a shallow or a medium for brood. They said they don't have trouble over wintering there hives with this setup. I assume the deep and the mediun would be full of stored honey. I think I'm going with the recommendations of this forum and eventually go to all mediums with small cells.

I appreciate any help you can give!

Thanks
Barnabus

[Michael Bush]

>I'm going to work my hives this Tuesday, These are the ones I posted about June 6th being honey logged.

Honey bound?  I'd try to open up the brood nest.

>Well it seems as if I'm going to have a extra Queen. Can I take brood (capped and not capped) from two different hives and combine them in one nuc as a split? I know I have to put a frame with honey for them to feed on. If so what proceedure would you recommend? Should I try to use three frames of brood?

What do you hope to accomplish?  You're talking about spending bee resources (brood, honey etc.) and what you want to do depends on what you hope to do.  Do you want to build this up for the winter?  Do you just want to bank a queen for a little while?  What kind of equipment do you have to put them in?  I often bank a queen in a medium depth two frame nuc with one frame of brood and one frame of honey.

Other issues are if the two frames of bees will fight.  This depends on the strength of the original colonies (smaller ones are less likely to) and the agressivness of the original colonies.  Obviously a frame from an agressive colony has already shown it's disposition.  Also what you do has to do with timing, where the queen came from etc.  If some of the bees are from the queen's home hive, they will accept her and even defend her.  If none of the bees are from the queens home hive and the none of them have been queenless, then they will ball her.  Putting her in a candy cage or in a push in cage will greatly improve the odds of acceptace as will having the bees queenless overnight.

>I attended a local bee association meeting Thursday and someone recommended taking frames, with only honey, (that isn't copped) out of the deep box that is full of nothing but honey and putting them in the freezer and freezing them, to kill wax worm eggs, and then storing them in air tight bag to use as food for the bees this fall before winter. Has anyone heard of doing this?

I've never done it.  Yes I've heard of it.

> Will it work.

Yes it will.  But that's a lot of resources (freezer bags etc.) to use on the project.  I prefer to store honey on a hive where the bees will protect if for me.

>There was quite a bit of discussion about honey bound hives and most of the experianced beekeepers says that using two deep boxes for brood in this AREA will cause them to store honey in the top deep box when its really not needed then they end up going higher to, usually into the suppers, to build brood or they just simple slow down their reproduction.

If you start with one box n the spring and then you add the second you put a coupe of frames of brood up into the second you encourage (nay, force) the bees to expand the brood nest into both boxes AND you give the queen more room in the bottom one.

>Most all the beekeepers use just one deep and then a shallow or a medium for brood.

But what do you do if you want to rearrange things?  The frames in the medium won't fit in the deep so they are not interchangable.  When you want to bait the up or pyramid them up to get the brood nest to expand you can't pull a frame from below and move it up.  If you have honey from supers that you want to use to beef up hives that are low on stores in the fall they may not fit where you have empty frames you want to swap them with.

>They said they don't have trouble over wintering there hives with this setup.

That that is presumably enough stores for your climate.

>I assume the deep and the mediun would be full of stored honey.

Probably mostly full going into winter.

>I think I'm going with the recommendations of this forum and eventually go to all mediums with small cells.

I think three mediums would be eaiser.  Even two mediums.  Two mediums is roughtly equivelant to a deep and a shallow.  Three mediums is exactly equivelant to two deeps.

Michael