Ok today I decided to take the bull by the horns and sort out the mess I had created last year in my hive by mixing brood and brood and half frames in a brood and a half box.
I've thought long and hard and sort advice from fellow bee keepers.
The plan was to open the hive on a nice spring day, remove as many of the extended brood and a half frames, cut away the extension and then put them in a new brood box along with as many of the four standard brood frames which would be full of capped cells, larvae, eggs and stores. Then make make up the full box by fitting new clean brood frames at either end. The new box would then be put on top of the old brood an half and allow the colony to settle down in the top box before switching top for bottom a few weeks later. Confused well I was!
First things first was to get absolutely anything that I thought I would need out in the garden and then anything that I thought I wouldn't need! Then stick rigidly to the plan.
So here goes nothing, I knew the bees would be pissed so had plenty of smoke ready to try and calm them down, I smoked the entrance, took off the lid which I would invert, cracked the crown board and smoked again, then I put the new brood box on the inverted roof.
With the old brood frames exposed another squirt of smoke and lift the first brood an a half out which was almost like new, this was put to one side to use to close down the size of the old brood and a half box once as many frames were removed as possible. Two new clean brood frames were put in the new brood. Time to remove the stores frames, these came out easily and the extensions were cut away with the now standard size brood going into the new brood box. I was soon into the four standard brood frames, these had loads of brace comb hanging from the bottom a mixture of stores and capped drone brood, I carefully cut away the brace comb, the bees didn't like that and then put the brace comb in the bottom of the brood and a half. The second of these had the Queen on so I carefully placed her with frame into the new box, transferred a couple more stores frames and completed the new brood with two more new frames.
At this point I changed my mind, time will tell whether I was right or wrong, knowing that the Queen was in the new brood box, I decided the best place for her was at the bottom of the hive, I lifted the brood an a half off the mesh floor and put it onto a spare inverted roof. Then quickly I put the new standard brood plus Queen onto the old mesh floor and stand, on went a Queen excluder, that was on of the bits I didn't need with plan A! Carefully put the old brood and a half that had about four frames in on top, next I carefully put all the frame extensions and brace comb with stores and brood into the brood and a half, standing them up so that the bees could access both sides, this also included the drone brood, think that might have been a mistake, should have culled them for varroa. With everything back in the hive I replaced the crown board, brushed the bees off the roof put that in place and then tidied up, all in all this took about 20 minutes.
As you can see the hive is now quite a bit taller, I will leave them alone now for a few weeks, hopefully by then the drone brood will have hatched and the bees will have salvaged all the stores from the top brood and a half. The aim is to remove the top brood and a half, salvaging anything of use to the bees, maybe using a super for anything left and then revert to a relatively straight forward summer of bee keeping!
Famous last words.
Sorry if I have lost anybody with this post, it's really just a record so that other fellow beekeepers can say what I did right and wrong!
