Dear everybody
 
I have recently acquired six hives from someone who has given up due to
old age.
 
These hives are strong, but they have come through the winter with 3
full supers of honey each. This has now granulated and is solid in the
combs. If I uncap these and put some empty supers of drawn comb under
these (with a board between with a hole in it) Will the bees rearrange
the honey down into the new empty supers ?
 
Others have suggested putting the stuff out for the bees to rob back
into the hives, but having done this once last year, never again, the
bees went mad, and once all the honey had gone, they seemed to forget
how to forage, and started beating eachother up. The net result was
about 2 weeks loss of activity, also it was very nasty going into the
apiary while this was going on, (it was like standing in a big food
processor full of bees).
 
Any thoughts would be appreciated
 
Steve Pearce