My hitherto" nice" hive, on a brood and a half plus Q excluder and super; seem to be having issues.
They seem to have an abundance of drone brood 2 sides of a deep frame(drawn as drone comb) plus a side of the half brood box. The queen is green in her third year loads of capped and open normal brood stores in the brood boxes plus in the super which is nearly half drawn.
A lot of the empty cells in the brood box have been filled with nectar not all though.
I pulled the brood frame of drone comb out and replaced it with a part drawn frame from another hive, checked the drone brood I pulled out for varroa and no sign(checked the inspection board and maybe 10 to 15 mites on it if that after being in for 2 days ,not much detritus . I do have a spare deep box but no drawn comb just foundation .
They seem pretty tetchy vail bumping but not following far if at all.
There also seems to be a good 20 to 30 dead bees on the flag stone in front of the hive varying sizes aswell as the odd drone but also some much smaller darker bees among them.
My thoughts are that they are in need of space. so whether or not to pull a couple of food frames ,add a patty and checkerboard a few foundation frames . Or just to split the half brood and the deep with a full deep of foundation. Or just to pull a split out and hope they raise a queen.
The latter I'm a little loathed to do as I already have a split waiting to raise a queen but if I get a couple of cells I suppose I could give the second split a QC from the first to speed things up.
I'm open to suggestions so any advice would help.
They seem to have an abundance of drone brood 2 sides of a deep frame(drawn as drone comb) plus a side of the half brood box. The queen is green in her third year loads of capped and open normal brood stores in the brood boxes plus in the super which is nearly half drawn.
A lot of the empty cells in the brood box have been filled with nectar not all though.
I pulled the brood frame of drone comb out and replaced it with a part drawn frame from another hive, checked the drone brood I pulled out for varroa and no sign(checked the inspection board and maybe 10 to 15 mites on it if that after being in for 2 days ,not much detritus . I do have a spare deep box but no drawn comb just foundation .
They seem pretty tetchy vail bumping but not following far if at all.
There also seems to be a good 20 to 30 dead bees on the flag stone in front of the hive varying sizes aswell as the odd drone but also some much smaller darker bees among them.
My thoughts are that they are in need of space. so whether or not to pull a couple of food frames ,add a patty and checkerboard a few foundation frames . Or just to split the half brood and the deep with a full deep of foundation. Or just to pull a split out and hope they raise a queen.
The latter I'm a little loathed to do as I already have a split waiting to raise a queen but if I get a couple of cells I suppose I could give the second split a QC from the first to speed things up.
I'm open to suggestions so any advice would help.