My Beehive is Full, Now What?

So you purchased a beehive or nuc from petricbees.com and now the box is getting full and you don’t really know what’s next. Don’t worry! We are here to help!

Upon inspecting your now single box beehive, you find that it looks pretty full. What should you do? A typical deep box has 8-10 frames inside of it. When you pull the lid off of your hive and bees are covering at least 7 frames with bees, brood, honey, pollen, and nectar, we recommend adding a second box at this time.

Failure to add more space to your beehive will often result in some sort of issue for you in the near future. If the queen runs out of space to lay eggs and continue to grow the beehive in the spring and early summer, she will most likely start to consider swarming- where the queen and about half the bees leave to find another home, or absconding all together – the entire beehive leaves in search of a more suitable home.

As a beekeeper, you do not want your bees to swarm or abscond. This will cause less bees and less honey production and less pollination, which one or all of these is probably what you are after as a beekeeper. So how do you avoid it?

What to do?

Make sure when your beehive is full of bees on at least 7 frames, you are adding a second box. Be sure they have space but not too much space, this can cause problems with pests such as small hive beetle. See that they have plenty of food and pollen, supplement if needed. Make sure they are not getting overrun by SHB and or mites, treat if necessary.

Checking your bees once a week should be enough to keep an eye on them and see what is going on in your beehive. Keep an eye out for more great tips and tricks from Petric’s Bees and Honey. When you are looking for high quality bees, look no further than Petric’s Bees! petricbees.com/sale order your bees, beehives, 4 frame nucs, 5 frame nucs, and kits today!