I checked my bees a couple of weeks ago and more than 80% of the brood box was full. I added the flow super with the queen excluder.
My bees are very busy during the day and in the past week I see lots of bearding activity with many bees staying outside on the porch all night. There are a lot of bees working in the flow super. Yesterday there were lots of bees circling the hive in the heat of the day but they settled back into the regular routine by late afternoon. My friend who has traditional bee hives said that it seems like the bees may need more space. Do I need to add a second brood box? I live in North Georgia in the USA. We are having hot days (upper 80’s) and cool nights (mid to high 70’s_
Thank you for your help.
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Welcome Leighm!
I am in Alabama with similar weather. I asked the people who supplied my nuc the same question. They said when the comb is 70% full to add another level for them to work on. I did the same as you and added flow super and noticed so many bees that I added another brood box on top of the flow for them to work on. My intention is to move it down below the queen excluder after a while. My bees have been bearding as well so what I did was open the vent in the back to give more ventilation. They seem to be going ok but still early to tell.
Want to add I’m a newbie to the flow hive as well so maybe others have some expert advice.
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Thank you for your response. I will try to vent things a little more and see what happens.
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I want to add that I did not add the top box over the flow until they had filled spaces and crevices and started storing honey.
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My first brood box is 80% full. I added a second brood box under the first one. If they manage to fill both before the nectar flow ends then I will add the super. My local bee keeping club recommended 2 brood boxes since I have the 8 frame boxes here in East Tennessee.
Also. Venting is very important for the humid climate around here. Inner cover & Roof ventilation
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Pull out your flow frames and check they are closed properly from front to back.
You may have leakage. Check your pest management tray as well to see if its got nectar/honey in it.
Sounds like you have a ventilation issue. The flow super is almost the same as 2 standard honey supers so you should have plenty of room.
Check the brood. It could be honey bound if you have a good flow on. Remove a frame of stores and add empty frame.
If not already you could remove your pest management tray for added ventilation.
I also remove the crown board plug when I super.
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Just curious why you added the second box below instead of above? Thx.
The ladies seem to naturally work from the top back of the box, furthest from the entry, first. After extensive research I decided to follow what others had success with.
Thx. Can you share your research? I just added a brood box above two days ago. If it is more effective to add below, I will swap it.
Here is some. But a simple Google search will reveal a plethora of information about the benefits. One of the factors that had me add my second brood box to the bottom is that my frames are foundationless. Bees tend to want to stay clustered and have been known to try building comb upward. Not interested in a mess.
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just an update on that: I did nadir that hive and the bees were slow to build- I have since had better results putting new boxes on top. I haven’t done enough of either to say definitively which is best but I personally havn’t had great success with nadiring.
also I generally use wired foundation- but I do some foundationless. However when I do that I always checkerboard with foundation and this avoids cross comb messes. I am having very good success making foundationless honeycomb by the checkerboarding method. Once they have drawn everything I can simply remove full frames and replace. the wired frames stay in as food for the bees and guides for my foundationless combs.
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