Too Much of a Good Thing: Managing Honey Bound Hives 🍯

A honey-bound hive is one that has stored so much nectar or syrup that it runs out of room outside the brood area and begins filling the brood nest. This leaves the queen with nowhere to lay, which is detrimental to colony health. Without intervention, the hive population can dwindle and eventually die. Honey-bound hives are also common when a hive becomes queenless during a strong honey flow—such as after swarming, supersedure, or unsuccessful requeening.

Key Facts

1.      Honey-bound hives occur when there’s no more space for nectar or syrup storage.

2.      From February through September, the queen should have multiple brood frames or at least a few frames that are two-thirds empty in the lower brood box.

3.      It's only acceptable for the brood nest to fill with syrup in late fall as the hive naturally prepares for winter; even then, some brood nest frames should remain at least 50% open.

4.      Winter stores needed: 30–40 pounds in the South and 60–80 pounds in the North.

Identifying Honey-Bound Hives

 Signs of a honey-bound hive:

1.      All boxes above the brood box are full of honey.

2.      Between February and September, the lower brood box contains mostly capped honey with just a few brood frames; open brood cells are filled with nectar or syrup.

3.      No open space remains for the queen to lay.

4.      Excess burr comb is being drawn throughout the hive.

5.      You’ve been feeding heavily or there's a strong nectar flow.

Some hives are only partially honey bound. If the lower box still has three or four brood frames and the rest is full, it's often enough to stop feeding and add a box. The bees will typically move food upward, freeing space for the queen.

Fixing a Severely Honey-Bound Hive

 If your hive is more seriously honey bound, try this method:

1.      Remove two honey frames on either side of the brood nest.

2.      Place them at least 20 feet away to be robbed out by other bees (this may take under an hour or a few days).

3.      Reinsert the now-empty frames beside the brood.

4.      Add an empty box.

5.      Stop feeding.

These steps typically solve the issue, but it's important to continue monitoring food stores afterward. Just because there's excess honey now doesn't mean there will be later. It takes two frames of nectar or syrup to raise one frame of brood, so strong hives consume stores quickly.

Learn how to quickly fix a honey-bound hive with practical tips from Blake Shook in this short, informative video.

Why feed if you don’t have to? We often assume that a nectar dearth means we should feed—but that’s not always the case. Watch as Blake Shook shows us what sufficient stored honey actually looks like.