# Mostly brood no just honey combs



## AngelaL (Jun 25, 2015)

After one of my hives swarmed this spring I decided to expand the brood nest by putting him a few spacers in my other two hives hoping to keep them from swarming too. Now the queen has laid eggs all the way to the 23rd bar. There are 4 partially built combs with just honey (not capped)
Any thoughts?


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Sounds like a good queen.

What's the issue? And surely there are some combs near the entrance with pollen, and honey on the top of most of the brood combs, right?


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## AngelaL (Jun 25, 2015)

Yes lots of brood and drone cells. Capped honey across the top. The only book I have is Les Crowder's and his drawings don't show that many bars with brood.
I think I found emergency queen cells too. They were on the last bar with drone cells next to the new combs being made. Two capped queen cells together hanging in the middle, not the ends. Last I saw the queen was June3. But I didn't look for her since there was so many eggs. Should I leave everything alone and let them sort it out?
How will I have honey to harvest if there brood nest is so large?
Finally, the hive that swarmed beginning of June still has no capped brood, but lots of nectar. Should I put some capped brood from the full hive in just in case there is no queen?
Thanks


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

AngelaL said:


> Yes lots of brood and drone cells. Capped honey across the top. The only book I have is Les Crowder's and his drawings don't show that many bars with brood.
> I think I found emergency queen cells too. They were on the last bar with drone cells next to the new combs being made. Two capped queen cells together hanging in the middle, not the ends. Last I saw the queen was June3. But I didn't look for her since there was so many eggs. Should I leave everything alone and let them sort it out?
> How will I have honey to harvest if there brood nest is so large?
> Finally, the hive that swarmed beginning of June still has no capped brood, but lots of nectar. Should I put some capped brood from the full hive in just in case there is no queen?
> Thanks


Move very young larva/eggs to the possibly queenless hive, but if they swarmed beginning of June your new queen will be just starting to boot up. Adding some young brood isn't going to hurt that at all so swap away. But shake all the bees off so you don't transfer your queen on accident.

Regarding the queen cells. It's possible they are superceding. If it's only a couple cells it is probably either supercedure or emergency. If you went through the whole hive and only saw those two cells AND you saw eggs, chances are they are just going to replace her. Stay out of it for a couple of weeks. If there were lots more queen cells they are thinking about swarming and that's a different approach to deal with as they would have already left most likely.


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## cgybees (Apr 20, 2015)

AngelaL said:


> Yes lots of brood and drone cells. Capped honey across the top. The only book I have is Les Crowder's and his drawings don't show that many bars with brood.
> I think I found emergency queen cells too. They were on the last bar with drone cells next to the new combs being made. Two capped queen cells together hanging in the middle, not the ends. Last I saw the queen was June3. But I didn't look for her since there was so many eggs. Should I leave everything alone and let them sort it out?
> How will I have honey to harvest if there brood nest is so large?
> Finally, the hive that swarmed beginning of June still has no capped brood, but lots of nectar. Should I put some capped brood from the full hive in just in case there is no queen?
> Thanks


You never said how many bars in your setup altogether. Typically when there's a flow on the bees will start storing whole combs of honey, typically at the 'back' of the hive away from the entrance, typically the queen won't go past a full honey comb to lay. I say typically because as others have pointed out, bees don't read the books we do to know what they 'should' do. I'd expect to see the bees start back-filling what is currently brood area with honey as they prepare for winter, and the queen get 'shoved' back towards the front by lack of laying space, if nothing else occurs between now and then. Normally when bees 'bounce' at the end of the honey area and start backfilling brood space, it becomes a trigger to swarm, as the queen runs out of space to lay, and they run out of space for honey. I'd watch to see what they do and decide what, if anything, you want to do about it as it goes.. keep us posted, this one is interesting!


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

I had that problem with a really productive queen this year. She ran up and down all 28 bars laying to beat the band. I decided to add a vertical plastic queen excluder and put 9 of the uncapped nectar (or drone comb) bars on the other side of the excluder. Worker bees could still enter directly into that portion of the hive since there are 3 entrances on the front. That seems to have fixed my problem. While this queen would go past a full bar of honey to get to another freshly drawn comb to lay eggs, she hasn't tried to squeeze past the excluder, even though it's not bee-tight.

I've started using these vertical queen excluders in a few more of my TB hives in order to run a 2 queen system (or get a few extra queens without making splits and having them robbed out.


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## ShannaRose (Feb 10, 2015)

That looks like a great answer. I have also been following Les Crowder's book on hive manipulation and by expanding the brood nest to delay swarming, and I'm also ending up giving her the whole hive to lay in. I did have a couple mostly honey bars at the back and I was very surprised to find her crawling around on one of them yesterday. I decided it was time to clear out as much as I could, and gave 5 combs of brood and bees to another hive and took out all the honey I could ( I did leave that one comb of honey and pollen she was on). Shrank back the hive quite a bit. 

Ruth, did you order the excluder and just cut it at angles to fit your tbh? Attached it with wire? I love this idea! Which kind of excluder and who did you order it from?
Thanks
Shanna


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

We are very fortunate to have a local supplier of bee-ware in our area. I just got it from him for $3.50 It's just a plastic queen excluder that fits a Lang. My husband has a dremel scroll saw that cuts through the plastic so easily. I used the division board to trace the shape. It just sets inside the hive with the edge of the plastic sticking up slightly above the topbars by 1/4 inch and the bottom edge touching the screen floor. Bees propolis it heavily to the 2 touching bars so I stays in place even when you move bars around. You have to peel it out to move it.


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## AngelaL (Jun 25, 2015)

The hive that swarmed has lots of capped brood and baby bees. Yay! There must be a new queen in there.
I was going to put in brood from my other hive as was suggested but there was so little capped brood that I was a bit worried. I can never find the queen either. We got the bees last year and the Queens had a green mark.
The queen in The nearly full hive has really slowed down on her egg laying.
I hope they do back fill with honey.
Thanks for the replies and tips.


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## AngelaL (Jun 25, 2015)

I forgot to mention the hive has 30 bars.


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