I have two hives, one is larger, five medium 8 frame boxes and the other is smaller, three medium 8 frame boxes. I treated them both with Formic Pro about three weeks ago and today I started getting them ready to overwinter. The small hive only has 16 “active” frames. The bottom eight are mostly brood and some food, the top eight are all food. The other eight frames were on the edges and in the top and there are only about two frames of drawn comb. I pulled those empty frames and now have two boxes plus the top feeder. Can I overwinter with only two medium 8 frame boxes? (Assuming I’d be feeding regularly.)
While it doesn’t seem like it, there are a lot of bees in that smaller hive. They just never filled up the top box and edges. My other thought it to take the top box (all food) from the larger hive, lay down some newspaper, and stick it on top of the two box hive.
Any thoughts or guidance would be appreciated.
Thanks,
