Congested Top Entrance

[40 Acre Bees]

Well there appears to be a good flow starting and we have so much congestion at the top entrances of all four of our hives, we don't know what to do.  Everyone seems to want to use the small top entrance and ignore the wide opening on the bottom.  As suggested in a previous post I reversed the brood boxes when we did our spring inspections, and the queens appear to be in all the bottom boxes but the girls insist on using the top entrance.  Should we just let them figure things out or is there something we can do.  Thanks in advance.

[Michelle]

when I worked on my bees last monday I removed the top entrance and they figured out to use the bottom entrance! I switched up the brood boxes as well.

[efmesch]

Your bees are smart: by using the top entrance, they save the trouble of having to work their way up through the crowded brood box to get to the storage area for depositing  the nectar.  I would suggest that you cooperate with them and make it even easier---slide the top super back a bit, making a larger and easy entrance for the field bees all across the top of the brood box.  When you see that the honey flow has subsided and traffic has reduced so much that the extra entrance room is no longer necessary and robbing can become a concern, simply slide the super forward again and close up the space.  Your smart bees will figure out just what to do and adjust to the new situation by using the original entrances.