Hello Aaron & All,
>To my astonishment I observed that the bees were showing an OBVIOUS
preference for the drawn frames of either end of the single deep box
and were decidedly forsaking the newly drawn frames in the center,
even though the newly drawn frames had brood of all stages (eggs,
larvae and capped pupae).

In my opinion the hive needs more bees to cover all the frames. There are
several solutions. Its true the bees prefer the dark comb but ignoring eggs
and larva only happens when there is not enough bees to cover the brood.

1. add more bees.

2. give the unsealed brood to another hive with bees to cover.

3. go through the nucs and adjust by moving frames around ( less queens) so
each has enough bees to cover the brood.

When we set up singles we split the "donor" hive in two ( by finding the
queen and completely disassembling the hive and sorting stages of brood,
frames of honey & pollen and empty frames if any then we build two new hives
carefully giving each new hive what it needs *in the proper place* and give
each hive a cluster of brood (in the center). One hive old queen and one a
new queen or cell. newly drawn comb or foundation on the outsides of the new
brood nests (  when foundation is placed in the center (or not enough bees
to cover all brood)the brood nest bees will tend to split to each side when
temperatures drop or simply all go to the side the queen is on). The hardest
part is knowing the correct amount of shake bees to add so there is enough
bees in each  hive to care for all the brood.

In commercial beekeeping splitting a strong single in half results in a
strong hive ready to split or add a second box in a few weeks. Making 2
frames nucs takes twice as long to get to the same place but works when time
is not an issue. If we want faster hives we use drawn comb. If time is not
an issue we use foundation.

bob








 

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