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How to stop the bees from filling in the brood area with honey?

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 2:17 pm
by DuaneB
My 3 main, over-wintered hives (Italians) are hard at work filling all the available space, in the brood area, with nectar. The queens have no where to lay eggs. I have counted over 30 queen cells between the 3 hives. Each hive has a Med. super on them, but they don't seem interested in them.

What can I do, or what do I need to make them quit filling in the brood area with nectar???

Re: How to stop the bees from filling in the brood area with honey?

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 3:49 pm
by Wally
Add another deep and checkerboard. Although, it may be too late. Once they make up their mind, they usually swarm, whether you remove the queen cells or not.Removing the Q-cells is a great way to make a hive queenless and watch it die.

Re: How to stop the bees from filling in the brood area with honey?

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 6:08 pm
by Gary B
I agree with Wally. I'm in the same situation. I made multiple dumb decisions this year -- a. not getting supers on soon enough to provide room for her to lay and then b: thinking I was doing the right thing and cutting out all the swarm cells (I'll show those bees not to swarm). Now I think I may have a strong queenless hive. I added another queen in a cage, we'll see if they accept her. I'm making a pact with myself to never cut out another supercedure or swarm cell again!

As far as getting them to load up in the super, I generally don't extract all my frames from the previous season, but leave a couple in the freezer. When you put your super on throw a couple frames of honey in the super. I've found that will encourage the bees to go into the super and deposit nectar there, especially if you're using a queen excluder.