Currently, I would tend to wait until the brood boxes are fully occupied and then if the weather is cool use an insulated dummy and increase the area gradually (usually by ~ 40% to start) bringing up sealed brood and possibly a frame of stores. In polyhives and with trickle feeding from a well insulated contact feeder they will expand up into the box rapidly.
i live here in cold climate and I should take care of hive shilling
i do not understand your dummy idea?
When the empty box is under brood box, the heat stays upstairs. Like in natural hives brooding starts up and goes downstairs. Bees have those instincts.
Contact feeding? Just now bees have lots of food in nature.
Bees expand rapidly if they have much brood which emerge.
And brood cycle is 3 weeks.
I cannot understand how syrup feeding can add emerging brood.
.you have really strange systems in UK.
What I have learned is
- heat and insulation helps colony to expand brood area.
- feeding and food frames reduce the warm area where brooding is favourable.
- electrict heating speed up colony growth in spring. In 2 box hive queen comes easily downstairs to lay when floor is warm.
- when I move a hive to outer pastures and I take heating off, it is easy to see how weak hives at home buid up faster with heating.
- all kind of heat leak holes upstairs makes build up slower.(=feeding box)
. When my hives start to expand at the beginning of June, I add every week one box more. I am not able to move dummy board. Expansion is so fast.
.remember. We had two feet snow 5 weeks ago and first pollen from nature came 2 weeks ago (3.5) first dandelions are now open. Salix alba started blooming.
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