Going to add my second brood box. I have acquired frames with drawn comb from another beekeeper. I’m wondering about placement into my second hive and if I should use all drawn frames, not to add them or put some foundation frames in as well? Also, two of the 10 frames I’ve acquired are full honey frames (a few ants have gotten onto the one frame but not too many), what can I do with these? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Kris
My suggestion would be to put the honey filled frames to the outside. That leaves the centre frames for brood as the queen lays close to the centre rather than towards the outer frames. The bees will move honey around it they decide they want to store pollen in there instead, but they generally keep honey in the outer frames.
The ants should brush off. Once they are in the hive the bees will control any more ants that try to get to them.
If you have drawn frames it’s better to use them. If you don’t you have to store them safely so they don’t attract wax moth.
What happened to the bees that previously inhabited these combs?
@Stevo I’m not sure. The comb is nice and white coloured, only about a year old on foundation frames.