Do bees move up or down to expand?

[jezd]

Any know if bees generally move up or down to when expanding the brood area? I would assume down given this is what would happen in the wild.

Cheers

Jez

 

[grizzly]

Hi Jez
Bees invariably move upward.
But i guess they adapt to the given space available, i know the queen will lay in a double brood, moving up and down into each box to lay.

 

[Poly Hive]

Up.

PH

 

[David P]

I would put a caveat in at this point saying that bees usually move up, unless of course thats what you want them to do, in which case they will probably go down.



David

 

[jezd]

I would put a caveat in at this point saying that bees usually move up, unless of course thats what you want them to do, in which case they will probably go down.



David

thanks all, its a bit of a repeat question form another thread, my issue is I have 2 hives on 12x14 that I need to move to standard brood, both strong hives so do I put the BB under or over the 12x14 box?

Cheers

Jez

 

[Poly Hive]

Above.

PH

 

[user 382]

If they are both strong, why do you want to put them into smaller boxes? I've been doing the opposite and moving from standard national to 14x12.

Anyway, to do what you ask, I'd start off with the smaller box (assuming it contains just foundation) on top. The extra warmth above the brood will help the wax drawers pull out the new frames. This is effectively a Bailey comb exchange. Once several frames are drawn out, I'd swap the boxes around so that the box of new frames is at the bottom. I've found doing this gives the queen more of a chance to lay in the frames before the bees fill them with stores. Then just place the queen excluder between the two, ensuring the queen is in the bottom box.

Others may do it differently, but this approach works for me.

Cheers,
Steve