On 28 May, 08:59, Steve P <s...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Charlie Kroeger wrote:
> >> Never seen a national
>
> > That's because you're an American and we don't use them.
>
> >> A fellow bee-keeper in the area [somewhere in Britain] has offered to
s=
upply me with a nuc on commercial frames.
>
> > Commercial frames are closer in size to American Langstroth frames
anywa=
y
> > they are, as you've intimated, larger than national frames. You can't
cu=
t
> > down the frames to fit the national hive box you can however add a
strip=
of
> > wood to the bottom of the national to acquire the necessary height.
>
> You are right Charlie, I am indeed in the UK. =A0I think I need to say
> more what I am trying to achieve. =A0I want to migrate the bees from the
> longer frames to the smaller national ones. =A0I was thinking of putting
> the shorter frames in the larger brood box next to the larger frames and
> when the brood has extended onto the smaller frames move it all onto
> smaller frames.
>
> This operation I am thinking will mean me scrapping a couple of frames
> of brood.
>
> Is there a way of encouraging the queen to stop laying on a frame
> without the attendant bees deserting the lavae and eggs there?
>
> Thanks
> Steve P
A few primary questions: firstly does your hive already have a colony
in it?
If not, 1. Can you just place two supers on the brood chamber? 2.
Remove some of the frames from the lower super? Then when the bees
spread to the rest of the hive locate the queen and place her in the
brood chamber under the excluder (which you would have had to remove
initially)?
if all of these are the case, then go for it, as the bees will tend to
the brood, and within a month, the bees will have hatched and the
cells will have begun to be used for honey production. At which point
you could give your beekeeper friend his frame back plus a bit of
honey! Be careful not to extract the honey if you detect any un-
hatched bees!
this process would rely entirely on your problem being that the frames
are too deep for your hive and not too long, in which case I would
build a nuke box to fit the nuke plus a few frames, and move them into
that with some of your national frames (you would need to extend the
handle things a bit) then place an excluder between the national
frames and the commercial frames (making sure the queen was with the
national frames) then once the brood has hatched you should cut the
national frames handles back to size and place in the hive with the
bees hatched from the commercial, thus avoiding the loss of brood and
as above, providing you with some honey frames.
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