Hi Bee Friends,
 
        I am looking for suggestions,  A friend of mine convinced me not to use queen
excluders on 2 of my 3 hives.  One of the hives is fine.  There is honey in
the super above the brood chamber and the queen seems to be staying put where
she belongs.  I opened the other hive yesterday and got a surprise!  It seems
the bees have bridged the gap between the top of the bottom brood chamber the
bottom of the top honey super with comb and the queen is laying eggs there.
In addition, she has started to move up into the honey super and about an inch
of the bottom of about 6 frames has had the honey removed and replaced with
brood.  It was quite a shock when I pulled some frames up out of the honey
super and looked down into the hive.  Unknowingly, I had ripped open the brood
cells between the upper super and the lower BC and there was a neat line of
uncapped, inch long larva lined up across the width of the hive.   I was
waiting for the bees to finish capping the honey super so I could take the
honey.  In the mean time they decided to turn it into a brood chamber
 
 
        So, here in lies the questions.   Should I take out the frames and scrape the
brood off the frames and extract the honey or should I find the queen, make
sure she is down in the lower BC and add a queen excluder.  I assume I can
wait a few weeks until the brood has hatched and the bees have filled the
cells with honey.  The honey flow if off now and I am not sure how long this
will take to happen.  Maybe months!
 
        What is the usual procedure for something like this?  Thanks for your thought
on this.
 
Sincerely,
 
Mason
 
 
 
 
Mason Harris
Burlingame, CA
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