Capped brood box honey last year.

[gary1]

I lost two hives this past winter. I decided to keep all the nicely capped honey from the brood boxes and stored it in my freezer. Along with some very nice drawn out deep supers, with and without honey.
The question: I have two new nucs, can I add the capped brood box honey to the out side frames on my ten frame boxes when I install the nucs? I planned to drop the drawn comb frames into the extra spots to help the bees along too. I will add the drawn supers after the 2nd brood boxes space is consumed by the bees. Can I add the brood capped honey to the outsides of the 2nd brood box too when the proper time comes.
Is this a good plan or not? Advice from very experienced keepers greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Jacobs]

I think you will be fine adding a frame of capped honey to each end of each brood box. The bees that read the bee books will be trying to do this on their own and you will save them a lot of effort. The ones that don't read the books may take brood all the way to 1 side of a brood box if they favor that side. They can move the honey you give them if they want to do this. Sounds like you have a good plan going in, but you may wind up putting the empty super with drawn comb on between the 2 "brood" boxes. Our nectar flow seems to be underway so if you get to a point of adding the 2nd box, the queen may move up and lay in it OR the foragers may fill it with nectar to make honey. The bees will let you know.

[gary1]

Thank you!
If I understand you correctly...since I am adding stores to the bottom brood box it may be best to split the brood boxes with the drawn super because of nectar flow. If I see nectar in the super I am good to go, if I see brood should I pull the super and bring the brood box back down or just let the queen lay brood in the super and leave the brood on top. Then add another super on top later with the 2nd flow starts.
Thanks again Jacobs.

[Jacobs]

The main thing is keeping an eye on what is going on in the hive. If you are not using a queen excluder, your queen can go anywhere to lay eggs. In my opinion, if you are going to extract honey, that is fine. Don't take any frames for extracting that currently have brood on them. Swarms may happen when the brood chamber gets crowded in the swarm season way--a good supply of honey above and lots of brood below. Swarms can also happen when hives get nectar bound and the queen has no where to lay eggs. In the past, beekeepers could stack supers on hives to give them space and not worry about them. With the coming of the small hive beetle, we have to balance giving the bees enough space, but not too much to protect given colony size.