Marc Sevigny wrote:

> Inspection of two of my hives found that
> there is nectar/honey in the upper brood
> chamber (2 deeps).  There is NO ROOM
> for laying in the upper deep.
> ....
>
> I was thinking that putting the brood chamber
> on top of the honey supers over a bee escape,
> then blowing out the remaining bees the
> following day might do it.
>
> Has anyone done this?  Will the effort be
> worth the benefit?

The bees can rearrange their stores much easier than you can do it,
provided you give them room to move the extra honey to.  If they don't,
you can assume that they would rather just live in the lower chamber and
save the upper one for winter.  At this time of the season, the rapid
brood expansion in over and they are in replacement mode.

I have occasionally extracted honey from brood chambers, and find that
pollen is often stored in the bottom of many cells and covered with a
thin layer of honey.  This pollen/honey is heavy and hard to uncap, and
will tend to unbalance the extractor if you're not careful.  So if you
do extract it make sure that you place similar frames across from each
other.

Another consideration is that late fall honey is said to be of poorer
nutritional value than that collected earlier in the season, so the
honey already in place would be better winter stores for them than if
they were to refill it with aster honey later.

Ted Fischer
Dexter, Michigan USA