Allen wrote: "So what I am saying is that the last few pounds are very important to prevent the bees coming up too soon and having the cluster split or move to one side and starving in a late cold snap."

We have two medium supers where the frames are not capped (about 50% of each frames is capped in both boxes) but they are full of nectar and a hive where the foundation is not drawn out in the top box so we are going to give these mediums to the bees this week. These mediums will go under the full brood box and we will pull off the top box with the frames of bare foundation. My question is - this will make the bees start the winter in the bottom, the two mediums, and work up to the top box which is a full deep? Also I am wondering how to get them back into two deep boxes in the spring? Or do I just let them continue on in this set up?

We have more than one light hive. We have 6 other hives that we plan to combine for the winter, the top brood boxes have 5 or 6 frames where the foundation was never touched, package bees and a really bad season. We do not have enough medium boxes to put under them all so my plan is to combine those hives, taking any extra frames that have food and saving them for a rainy day. I do not want to have to find the queens and plan on letting them duke it out, may the best one win. I will put newspaper between boxes when I combine so they have a chance to get friendly before the face to face meeting. There should have a good day next week to get this done. I have a call into our state inspector looking for some guidance and hope to hear from him.

If there are any experienced people here who have a better idea let me know I am willing to change my ways.

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