# Too much honey in brood chamber



## Doug R (Jul 18, 2001)

I added a honey super a week ago. The queen was laying eggs, all was well. I checked today and the bees are filling in the brood chamber with honey as bees hatch. I had three mediums for brood and now I have one medium with brood. I added another honey super and consolidated the brood into one box. I also added some foundation in the middle of the brood area. The queen is still laying eggs.

How can I expand the brood area with foundation. I don't have any drawn-out comb left.

Thanks,

Doug


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Add empty frames to the brood area. Remove the frames of honey. They are preparing to swarm.


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## Doug R (Jul 18, 2001)

I added one empty frame already. I didn't add more because I thought it may be bad to add empty frame to the brood area. I guess I have no choice. No sign of queen cells.

Michael, I was reading your site. I have found it immensely helpful. I do have a question: You say that you no longer cleanup the comb between frames and supers. How do you work your hive and not crush bees? The only reason that I do clean it out is because I will mush bees when I slide frames around.

Also, Doesn't having a top entrance leave you with a cloud of bees at you face when working the hive?

By the way, my other hive is doing extremely well and I'm very excited about that. This is probably my most productive season so far.

Thanks,

Doug

[ May 21, 2006, 10:53 PM: Message edited by: Doug R ]


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

michael bush adds:
They are preparing to swarm.

tecumseh replies:
they are filling in the brood area with capped honey above. this is common here, although pollen is typically the culprit. since the workers do not like to uncap the stores above, this means the space for the queen to lay is being reduced each day that this situration continues. as michael suggest unless the brood chamber is 'opened up' , you should prepare for this hive to swarm.

with the right timing this can be an excellent time to make increase.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I added one empty frame already. I didn't add more because I thought it may be bad to add empty frame to the brood area. I guess I have no choice. No sign of queen cells.

Just make sure there are enough bees to fill the gap where you are putting an empty frame. Don't add more than one or two at a time per box, especially if you have chilly nights still.

>I do have a question: You say that you no longer cleanup the comb between frames and supers. How do you work your hive and not crush bees?

If it's in the way I scrape it off. But mostly I just smoke them off of the tops of the bars and set the box down gently so they can get out of the way.

> The only reason that I do clean it out is because I will mush bees when I slide frames around.

Whatever works for you. If you move slowly, though, most bees get out of the way. No matter how slowly you move some never get out of your way.

>Also, Doesn't having a top entrance leave you with a cloud of bees at you face when working the hive?

There are a few more in the air, perhaps. I'd say it's hard to measure because anytime you tear down a hive you have a lot of confused bees that don't remember this tall white thing next to the hive and the hive is now shorter. There are always bees in the air when you work a strong hive. They aren't angry, just confused by the beekeeper there and the hive being slightly different.


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## Gene Weitzel (Dec 6, 2005)

tecumseh replies:
they are filling in the brood area with capped honey above. this is common here, although pollen is typically the culprit. since the workers do not like to uncap the stores above, this means the space for the queen to lay is being reduced each day that this situration continues. as michael suggest unless the brood chamber is 'opened up' , you should prepare for this hive to swarm.

Gene replies:
I have a 6 week old package that is putting nectar in the brood area as the capped brood emerges. They have drawn comb on 8 frames of a single deep, but they have not completely drawn the comb out on all the frames and have not drawn any new comb over the last week. A couple of the frames have been drawn all the way to the bottom bar on one edge. When I inspected this weekend, I still saw a fair amount of older open brood, but the capped brood is starting to look a little sparse. There seemed to be very little eggs and young brood because a lot of the brood nest had nectar in it. They have capped honey and pollen in about 1-2" of comb around the brood area on every frame. I am afraid that they may start swarm preparations soon if they don't quit putting nectar in the center brood cells. I started them on SC starter strips. Should I try putting a starter strip frame in the middle of the brood nest?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Should I try putting a starter strip frame in the middle of the brood nest? 

Yes.


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## Doug R (Jul 18, 2001)

I found two frames of Plasticell that was mostly drawn out (~80%) and added those to the brood area. Yesterday, I added some undrawn 4.9mm foundation. They have it about 30% drawn overnight! This is an unregressed hive.

Doug


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## Doug R (Jul 18, 2001)

How did I cause this problem in the first place? I asume it was because I didn't give them enough room for honey. I added an empty super only a week earlier. Wouldn't they want to swarm before they filled in the brood nest? This is like suicide. No room for eggs. What would a new queen do?

Doug


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## Pugs (Jul 15, 2004)

You didn't do anything wrong or to make it happen. It is what bees do; swarm.

Now if you want to stop it from happening, you need to fight what the bees want to do. You can do this by "opening up the brood nest" as Michael Bush calls it or try Walt Wright's 'Checker boarding". Do a search on Walt Wright and you will find some links to some of his articles and a place to buy a booklet (in PDF or dead tree format) from him. People who have tried it, swear by it.

Pugs


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

doug ask:
How did I cause this problem in the first place?

tecumseh replies:
get beyond the I. this is a relationship thing between you the beekeeper and the bees. you are in this together.

now I have never tried this myself, although this strategy comes from a well respected voice from tecumseh past. I will throw it out here and hopefully michael bush might respond.

a large part of the problem described is created from the solid plug of honey above the brood nest which the workers are not encouraged to uncap and move. even adding a new box to the hive will not alter the course that the hive has set itself upon, which is most typically swarming. so 'an' alternative to this problem is to take a fork or capping scraper and mechanically uncap this plugged super (during the time of year when robbing is likely this step would sound to me to be highly risky). then move this super to the bottom of the hive stack. then move the brood chamber above this honey super. place a new box above this brood box. the bees will not feel comfortable with the uncapped honey near the entrance and will begin to move it upwards. the brood nest will then begin to be opened up downwards towards the previously plugged honey super.


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## FordGuy (Jul 10, 2005)

instead of forcing the bees to use their time to move stores of honey, why not just add a brood chamber box with foundation, and checkerboard this with the capped honey frames? seems


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>How did I cause this problem in the first place? 

You didn't. Filling the brood nest with honey was their plan. That restricts the area the queen can lay in and she lays less. That slims her down so she can fly and leaves a lot of unemployed nurse bees that are free to swarm because they are not needed to care for brood because there isn't hardly any. That was their intent.

>I asume it was because I didn't give them enough room for honey.

Later in the year, that would be the primary cause. This time of year it's secondary. All the supers in the world would not have stopped them this time of year. The supers won't hurt and indeed, may be necessary, but in my experience, that alone will not stop a reproductive swarm.

> I added an empty super only a week earlier. Wouldn't they want to swarm before they filled in the brood nest?

No. It is their intent to fill it, cut down on brood so the nurse bees are not needed and can swarm.

> This is like suicide. No room for eggs. What would a new queen do?

If they left room the old queen would lay in it and the nurse bees would be busy caring for the brood and the whole sequence of "swarm" events would fall apart. Swarming requires a slimmed down queen that can fly and a lot of unemployed nurse bees. Backfilling the brood nest is how this is accomplished. The new queen won't emerge for several days after the swarm leaves and then it will be two weeks later before she is mated and ready to lay. By then they will clear an area for her to lay in. If you open the hive up about a week and a half after it swarms you'll see a nice semi circle of cleared area for the new queen all ready for her to lay. Besides the swarm will take a LOT of honey with them.

Read this:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm


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## Cyndi (Apr 26, 2005)

I have a question about this. I too opened my hive yesterday and found lots of congestion in the brood nest which consists of 2 mediums, 8 frames each. I saw lots and lots of queen cells. What I did was take 1 frame out of each box, one of the frames had brood and honey, while the other was mostly honey. I put in one frame of foundation only into each box (no drawn comb, just empty foundation) and used the pulled frames to help out a package of bees for my new hive.

What else could I do at this point. Could I pull more, or is that enough?? I have a feeling mine is or was preparing a swarm too, although, the super on top is filling nicely and is almost half full. Any more thoughts about this?? I read MB's article...I think I'm near the danger point, the queen cells are there and I even destroyed some of them because the frames I took, had them on it. Oh well, I think I'll wait a few days and go back in again. 

BTW, this was the same hive I thought was queenless 2 weeks ago. It had to have been the weather, they were actually really easy to work with again....horray, although I did buy some thick cowhide leather gloves anyway...







and they were a little touchy that I was going through the brood nest stealing their honey.

[ May 24, 2006, 03:31 PM: Message edited by: Cyndi ]


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

If you don't take about half the bees and brood out, they will swarm. I would steal brood and honey and bees and leave a lot of room.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

If there are capped queen cells they will swarm any minute now.


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## Doug R (Jul 18, 2001)

Okay, lots of information. Everything is making sense. Today I opened up the hive to check on things and possible add some frames or supers if necessary. I found two queen cells being made in the center of the frames. These are supercedure cells, right? This implies that the queen will be replaced, but all the other behaviors (backfilling) are saying they will swarm.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

Doug


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

dougR sezs:
These are supercedure cells, right? This implies that the queen will be replaced, but all the other behaviors (backfilling) are saying they will swarm.

tecumseh adds:
maybe / or maybe not. the location of the queen cell is not perfectly determinant of the reason for making another queen. if you believe the existing queen's laying was above average then I would be likely to suspect that swarming is what is going on here.

once some bees decide to swarm it becomes a bit difficult to change the 'girls' minds. if this is the route the 'girls' are determined to set themselves upon then your choice is whether to do this thing on your time or their time.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I found two queen cells being made in the center of the frames. These are supercedure cells, right?

I take the location as one part of the context. The other parts of this particular context are that there were a lot of queen cells, they were backfilling the brood nest. My assumption in this context would be that these are swarm cells.


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## shoefly (Jul 9, 2004)

Related question to Michael or others - so the window of opportunity for swarming are the 8 1/2 days between capping of the first swarm cell and the virgin queen emerging from the cell? Are there circumstances where they would swarm either before or after this window?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

They could swarm before but they usually don't. I wouldn't count on that though. I haven't seen them swarm after, but I wouldn't say that couldn't happen either. Virgins usualy don't go after laying queens.


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## Doug R (Jul 18, 2001)

I plan on doing my preemptive split tomorrow morning. The weather has been very rainy and cold lately, but tomorrow we are supposed to get back into the 70's and sunny.

I have a small backyard, so my split will have to be right next to the current hive. I'll move the queen and all but 1 open brood with some honey and frames with foundation. I'll leave one open brood and all the capped brood with swarm cells.

Queen cells are under way, there is no reason that I should wait, correct? Ie: Don't wait for the queen cell to be completed.

This seems like an excellent time to force a massive 5.4 to 5.1 reduction. How about just one frame of open brood, 4.9 foundation and 2 frames of honey? Look something like this: HFFFBFFFFH

Thanks,

Doug


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I'd probably do two frames of open brood and two frames of honey and shake in AT LEAST twice as many bees as you want in the split to make up for what will drift back.


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## honeyman46408 (Feb 14, 2003)

Well I will throw in my 2 cents

I found one of my hives that sounds like what has been talked about here,lots of bees, brood and brood chamber packed with nectar and cells.

I tried to find the queen BUT she must bee ready to leave, if I could have found her I would have put her and one frame in a box with 9 more frames with foundation and moved the rest of the hive to another spot in the yard so all the flight bees would return to the orgional hive and I would hope they would "think" they had swarmed.

But not being able to find her (I am not real good at finding them anyway) I did put one frame with a cell and brood at the orginal position and moved the hive with six frames of foundation (kind of Checker boarding). and put another frame with a cell in a nuc with 2 frames of brood and 2 frames of nectar and moved it in another direction.

Now it is wait and SEE!

"I" have done what "I" think now we shall see what they "think"


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## Doug R (Jul 18, 2001)

Okay. I did what I knew was a bad thing to do and did it anyway in the hope that it would buy me some time. I knocked out the two queen cells when I inspected the hive and cleared out the honey. They may still swarm, I figured, but not for a few days (I hoped). Well, I inspected today and there is no sign of queen cells and the queen is laying eggs.

My brood patter is this: 

HFBEBEFFFH
HBEBBBBFFH
HBEBPFFFFH

B=brood
H=honey
F=foundation
P=pollen
E=empty, drawn comb

Any thoughts?

Doug


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## Walts-son-in-law (Mar 26, 2005)

We'll send this to Walt


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