Agriculture Industry

fishlegs · Guest

Greetings,

I am a new beekeeper, located in Atlanta, GA, USA. I have 2 hives
that I started with all new equipment on April 24th from NUCs that I
bought from a master beekeeper in the area. Things have been going
well since then. I fed them sugar water for 3 weeks, added a shallow
super about ten days ago, and see plenty of capped brood cells when I
inspect the hives.

I was a little concerned however when I checked up on the hives
yesterday and found that the bees haven't even touched the frames in
the shallow super. A fellow newbie in the area added his supers at
roughly the same time and reports that his bees have made a fair
amount of progress in drawing out the combs in his supers.

I'm curious if I made a mistake pertaining to splitting up the brood
frames about two weeks ago. I had heard that because bees
instinctively fill up the center frames first, it's a good idea to
swap the center frames with the outer frames in order for them to feel
there's still plenty of space in the hive. I did this frame swapping
in my brood box after the bees had been in there for approximately 10
days (splitting the 4 frames that came with the NUC apart and putting
them on opposite sides of the brood box with the 6 less-drawn-out,
"new" frames in the center). After I did this to both hives, I read
somewhere that under no circumstances are you supposed to split up the
brood frames.

My questions are: Did I mess things up by splitting up the brood
frames? If so, than should I try reuniting the brood frames in the
center of the brood boxes (top halves of the current frames in the
center contain capped honey cells)? Any other advice?

Thanks,
erik

beekeep · Guest

On 20 May 2007 08:26:25 -0700, fishlegs <fishlegs@gmail.com> wrote:

xyzzy · Guest

Freddie Cooke · Guest

After more than 35 years experience with bees I would advise you never to
split up an establishing or indeed an established colony for the purposes
you stated. In general it is only necessary for the purposes of artificial
swarming. A process only neccessary if you overwinter colonies as we all try
to do here in the British Isles but is often impractical where winters are
too cold for too long.

Furthermore, I would urge you to always have a queen excluder screen in
place between the brood chamber and the super(s), unless you wish to create
what in England we refer to as a brood and a half during strong nectar
flows. Here most of us use hives with small brood chambers. We call them
British Standard National hives and they are roughly 18 x18x12 inches. In
the USA I guess most use Dadant hives which are considerably larger.

As a beginner it is very easy to render your colony queen-less as a result
of unnecessary manipulations. Far better to patiently observe and get hands
on help from beekeepers of greater experience. If possible make contact
with a commercial beekeeper because time and outlay costs are so important
to them they tend to adopt very sensible and efficient managemant
techniques.

Regards and best wishes,

Freddie Cooke. Wightwick. UK

fishlegs · Guest

Thanks for all of the responses. After waiting another week and still
seeing very little progress in the first super, I went ahead and
reunited my brood frames. Hopefully I haven't botched things up too
much or unintentionally crushed a queen. I won't be too concerned if
I end up with less honey, so long as the bees are happy.

all the best,
erik

beeman · Guest

On May 28, 12:10 pm, fishlegs <fishl...@gmail.com> wrote: