Commercial Hive Question

[Tindog]

Good morning folks,
I would like to pick your collective brains.
I have just acquired a second hand commercial hive together with drawn frames from a trusted source so I am as happy as one can be that it is disease free. I have one colony that is currently on brood and a half and very strong which I would like to swap over to the commercial hive for ease of manipulation. When would be the best time to do this please?
Thanks in anticipation.
Andy

 

[AndyTh]

Hi Andy,
Not until the spring build up. I would remove access of the queen to the half bbox, and get them to expand their broodnest upwards into the commercial box, then with the queen in the Commercial bbox, split off the old National bbox placing it Demaree style at the top, over a super or 2, which are in turn over the excluder. If you timed it for say first or second week of May it would become part of your swarm prevention as the queen would be busy laying up the Comm bbox (about 30% more cells than in a Nat bbox) for some time.
This way you keep one unified workforce in May, preferable to using an Artifical Swarm.

As you know Commercial and National hives have almost identical external dimensions so are interchangeable. What will you do with the old Nat bbox? (I am using mine as deep supers after reading that they are more efficiently used and better yields result).

Good luck,

Andy (formerly of Nottingham)

 

[Tindog]

I will hang on to the National as the Commercial is just an experiment really to see how it goes and I have about four other National hives. I too thought that Spring would be the natural time to do it but I'm far from being an expert in these matters.
Thanks for your reply