Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Trying to figure out how to prevent the girls from filling up the brood area with nectar during the Honey flow. I seem to be able to prevent/manage/control swarming during population growth by balancing out my yard. But I don't know what to do about the backfilling situation. Most of my hives are double deeps. I have medium supers on, but it seems like they would just rather crowd out the queen than go up to the honey box and put the nectar in there.

Would an upper entrance in the honey super help?

What are you thoughts?
How do you deal with the situation?

Thanks

I haven't had much success with upper entrances for the flow. Several years ago, when my hives were nectar bound, Wally told me that if I had open, drawn comb, put 1 super just above the bottom board, put the nectar bound super from the hive next, then put the next open, drawn comb super above it and put the rest together. This gave the queen a place to lay and her choice of whether to go up or down. It worked for me. You may have to bite the bullet and have a medium, deep, medium, deep, then mediums. I also haven't had much success with queen excluders. The bees may go through them some and put up nectar, but I usually wind up with the box just below the excluder being full of honey. However they decide to fill it, if they do, I'll take what they give me and extract it.

Well... What you said makes sense. I will keep the medium, deep, medium, deep, medium+ in mind for next year. Also, like you said, the deeps below the queen excluder are just about completely full/capped. They are putting some honey above the excluder, but not as mush as I'd like. Was hoping to keep the queen from laying in the honey supers.

If you figure out how to talk them into using the supers above the excluder they way we want them to, let me know! The only reason I suggested mediums for extra space now is because I thought that is what you had available for open, drawn comb. You can give them more space immediately with any open drawn comb below the excluders.