Double brood or not?????

[steve's bees]

I've been considering whether to try and build my bees up to double brood next year or not, I am running BS Nationals at the moment. I have started to feed them down for winter and some the hive look a bit crampted for space. Swarming is a natural thing with bees but I did think if they have more space it would help to slow this down. I have considered 14"x12" but it would cost a lot of money to change all the hives overand I do have plenty of spare National brood boxes. I was told that when checking double brood you should split the 2 brood boxes and if there are any queen cells they would be drawn down from the bottom of the top brood frames.
Has anyone had anything to do with double brood and does anyone have any advice on this matter?

 

[oliver90owner]

My views.
Brood and a half sucks. Two different frame sizes, brood nest split every inspection, all season through. Always over twenty frames to go through.

Double brood is better as there is the option of swapping frames from one box to the other. Heavy to be splitting at inspections. Much better option for increase. Not used them really, as I went from deep (plus the dreaded half) to 14 x 12.

14 x 12 is a cheap conversion and can be done done over two or three seasons. Ekes are so cheap to make and fit (a fiver?). Mine are in softwood but under cedar deeps. Frames are cheap as chips in the winter sales, so about a tenner a box, and foundation needs to be changed regularly anyway, so no real cost there.

Frames are heavier (and certainly a full brood box is!) and they can be more difficult to get drawn evenly (one way is to stick on a box as a super in the OSR flow). There is more honey left in the colony at the end of the year (unless the beek goes scrabbling around for the last dregs). Plenty of stores for winter, in fact likely too much (I was removing stores in the spring for early expansion after this last winter even though they had no autumn feeding and none during the winter either. I like the extra depth for the bees when wintering over open OMFs.

Some queens still lay upstairs early in the season and I allow them to do that as it reduces early swarming risk IMO.

Any more questions? All mine are on top space 14 x 12s.

Regards, RAB

 

[steve's bees]

Hi Rab,

Thanks for the tips, I like the way you made the Ekes to fit under your brood box so your only really having to buy the deeper frames and foundation.

Did you find you got more honey per hive and they didn't swarm as quick?

Cheers Steve

 

[adrian wilford]

double brood are very easy to manage and 14x12 is straight forward, less swarms with both i believe as the queen has more room than one national, only problem with 14x12 is when checking frame sfor eggs and brood you have to be careful that the comb doesnt fall out due to the weight.
more bees more honey?

 

[Travelator]

I use double brood for about half my colonies. Inspections are long-winded, and I would definitely not believe that stuff about always finding queen cells in between the two boxes! One other advantage of double brood is that the bottom box is usually empty by the spring, so you can do a low-effort wax exchange.

 

[Hivemaker.]

I run one or two colonys on multiple brood box's,i find it a very easy and efficient method.

 

[Midland Beek]

Some say that double brood is too large (you could use dummies to reduce its size). Some say that brood and a half with its two different frames sizes is a pain in the wotsit. Some say that brood/half is easy to work. Some switch to 14x12 and use any deeps they have as supers.

Operating colonies on single National brood requires far too much skill and diligence for my liking.

 

[Rosti]

I like the way you made the Ekes to fit under your brood box so your only really having to buy the deeper frames and foundation.

I faffed with Brood & 1/2 for a bit, assuming you want a larger BB then the simplicity of 14x12 one over in the end. I converted Nat BB's and used Demaree to transfer. Building the ekes is easy and cheap - about £4 a hive all in (from memory), whats more you can get 18mm x 96mm pine planks from B&Q. Very quick to construct. If you step the inner planks they lock to the original BB nicely (assumin you are on bottom bee space). I went 14x12 about 2 years ago and have not regretted it.

 

[oliver90owner]

Steve,

Did you find you got more honey per hive and they didn't swarm as quick?

Can't say re honey per hive, as I changed soon after starting beekeeping. I reckon my colonies are equivalent to a brood and a half for most of the time and a bit more some of the time. I am quite confident that there is reduced risk of swarming. It can, and does still happen - after all it is the successful colonies that reach that stage (all other factors being the same)

At the time of changing, I was really bucking the trend - there were none in my LBKA that had more than given 14 x 12 even a passing thought.

Going to top bee space and using mesh floors as well, was just a step (or two, or three) too far, for some of them.

I was also treating with oxalic acid, too, soon after that. My local bee inspector was not amused when I asked his views on the subject in those days - he was so much against, that it showed through very clearly.

How things change! Several years later a few are catching on to the advantages.

But there are still some downsides - like more honey left in the brood box, and the gross weight of the full occupied brood with floor and coverboard (for moving colonies).

Other upsides is the single tier for over-wintering (no risk that bees will not move up from deeps to shallows - if that is a risk) and the bees have more space to cluster further from the floor, than a single deep brood (that was a consideration when moving from solid floors to using OMFs, especially as I was a relatively new beek at the time). Oxalic trickling, if you do it, is easier, too, with one tier rather than two. I generally ran through the winters with a super over, in the first couple of years before converting. It was the norm for me as the 2 WBCs were set up that way by my mentor, so I followed his method - as one does, early on.

Regards, RAB

You may have read that I also run a couple of Dartingtons - again, same frame size, but different up and downsides (the biggest is that of mobility!). They are generally a good format as long as I get a suitable colony installed (early spring start and used for splitting for nucs, whenever I have wanted increase, or for extra bees (for the productive stocks on the OSR flow).

The 'extra deeps' will just fit my regular-issue 9 frame radial extractor (Lega), with tangential screens fitted. Tight and slow but I don't anticipate having too many to extract.