John Wolford wrote:
>
> I just finished adding supers to on hive.  During the winter I was feeding
> this colony of bees with the bag type feeder which utilizes a small super
> that is placed on top of the hive body.  Once the bees had finished off the
> sacks of sugar water they built comb in the area.  Today I scaped the comb
> off the top board and placed the comb on top of the top bars of the bee
> hive so I could add the queen excluder and my supers.  It was pretty messy.
>  Should have I, or shouldn't have I done this.  What are the consequences
> or results?
 
Hello John -
 
The bees filling in the voids with burr comb is quite a normal activity that they will do in a
situation like this. You probably could have taken the the small super off earlier or reversed
the hive bodies to have given them more room for the brood if they were all up high in the
hive right under the cover. As far as placing the comb you scraped off, back on top of the
top bars, unless you want more burr comb built on top of the frames and have your inner
cover "glued" to the hive (unless your using migratory tops) I'd keep all the comb
scrapings out of the hive especially if it is as much as I think you are talking about.
 
> Also, I have one hive that is queenless and has laying workers.  I placed
> two frames of brood from a strong hive into this hive.  I was told to do
> this so they would develop a new queen.  I did this about 7 days ago.  I
> checked today and did not notice any new queen cells.  I need some help on
> this one.  Anybody got any advice.  What next?
 
I think it's best to follow the advise that has been given here recently and again by Ted,
start over with this hive. You're going to keep taking from good hives to try and get this
messed up hive back on track and everybody I talked to says it's next to impossible to
achieve. I'll be following the same advice today with one of my hives that is in a similar
situation.
 
-Barry
 
--
Barry Birkey
West Chicago, Illinois  USA
[log in to unmask]
http://www.birkey.com