So after 2 years of not being able to get a nuc, this spring there are plenty all over. I have 2 supers almost fully drawn from 2 previous attempts at bees over winter. The guy I bought the nuc from was a hobbyist. It was a 4 frame nuc, and I picked it up in its plastic case. It was sitting at his place for a couple days. I got it home, set it on top of my hive to get them used to new area, and a couple days later decided to move them in.
When I opened it it was full… and I mean full. They had started a queen cell on the bottom of one frame even. But what bothered me the most was this box was made for 5 frames. So the frames were widened by these extremely active bees. So when I went to put in my super, I had to remove 5 frames to get the 4 in. Did that, and figured I wouldn’t mess with it at this fragile stage.
Fast forward 2-3 weekends (can’t recall exact date I got these) and I went to open the single super to see if they had filled it out enough to warrant adding another super on. Well the hive was fuller than I have ever seen it. These guys are on steroids. Problem is , they have joined a few frames, and built a lot up to the roof. So even taking the top off broke a lot of cells and oozed out honey. It seems more watery though so maybe nectar stage?
So I lifted a couple frames out. They broke apart fairly easy as the bridging isn’t too much, but they have drawn the original frames out too wide to be used normally and I won’t be able to fit another frame in. And also, on the few frames I checked there were only some capped cells at the very bottom, like 10% of the frame. The rest is absolutely full of honey. They have pretty well saturated this box already. So they are in desperate need of room. I scrapped off all the extra comb on the top of the frames, then added another super on top.
So my question is this. What should I do about the wide lower frames? Should I wait until the queen is laying in the new top half and then dispose of the wide lower frames and take the loss of brood and honey? Is it that big a deal? One of the frames I pulled out looked to have a bunch of deep capped brood, I’m assuming drones, but nothing that looked like queens. I was shocked they would expand the hive so quickly.
You could rotate those thick frames to your upper box (and to the outside) and then once all the brood emerges and the honey is capped you can use a knife to uncap them (and make them narrower) and then extract them.
If you don’t have access to a centrifugal extractor you can scrape them down and crush and strain to get the honey out. But unless you want the wax, I think it is a shame to destroy the bees’ hard work.
I get the odd frame in the brood that is too thick, which makes it difficult to squeeze frames together without squashing bees. Incidentally, welcome to the forum. What I do is cut the comb back level with the wooden frame, before putting it back into the hive. I would only do one at a time, on account that more could be too much for the bees to clean up in one go.
I have had occasions where the bees cleaned out all the honey, before the queen laid eggs in the empty cells. A place that she wouldn’t normally lay eggs in, going by the pattern on the adjacent frames.
Well spent a good hour on it yesterday. Moved the wide frames up. Some of the others they had started to widen as well with the gaps from the missing frame. I managed to get 10 in the bottom though. Had to shave off some of the excess and collect what honey I could for the kids… really nice cinnamon flavor I have never tasted before!
Anyways I think I have bigger issues. I didn’t see any brood ‘anywhere’. On one of the original nuc frames there were a couple queen cells near bottom of the frame on the side. But both were open. Since it has been about 2.5 weeks, I have to assume that they were probably never filled. The fact all brood space in the original frame was pretty well filled or starting to be filled with honey to me indicates that the queen the guy that sold me this supposedly put in there never was around long enough to lay any new eggs. I’m wondering if he saw the cells and thought he’d just throw in those brood frames minus a queen and save some money.
Anyways, have to buy a queen today and introduce her so she can get to work. In 2 weeks these guys have already produced more honey than I’ve seen in a season from the two previous attempts so want to keep the momentum.