double brood

[Finman]

.
In America and in Ausralia many professional use douple brood so that they lift all brood above the excluder. Then they give to the queen a box of empty combs or foundations or partly. This is a swarming preventing method.
Our biggest hive keeper (3000 hives) uses this method.

There are many variations to use exluder.

Do you try some method? ...hmmm. You need many hives and many years to clear out how methods work. HIves are very individual and with 2 hives you do not find much out what is nice.

Many professionals here use 3 medium boxes as brood room. It is equal to 2 langstroth boxes.

 

[Finman]

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If you like challenges, try, how big hives you may get. They do not drop from heaven. They need skill.

Many here think that I amd an old fart and I have no challenges. But I have every year. How to get 6 -8 boxe high hives and how to put them on best pastures. Nothing comes for free. Every year I must fight for these goals. That kind of hive may bring 180 kg honey and very easily over 100 kg honey.

If I want 4 boxes hives. It need not much. I just look TV and catch swarms from apple trees. With that size of hive best flow go pass.
in best flows good hive fills a medium box in 3 days. in 3 weeks flow hive yield is easily 120 kg. I like that.

If small is beatifull, keep the hives tiny that yields do not disturb you life.


SWARMING CONTROL

is very important in beekeeping what ever system you keep.
But biggest hives swarm first.

Here is MAAREC's advices what to do

http://agdev.anr.udel.edu/maarec/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Swarm_Prev_Control_PM.pdf

 

[Finman]

.
a nice beeyard.

Look, no excluder

nice hives, nucs and mating nucs

 

[Easy Beesy]

Depending on how prolific your bees are, there is a risk that most of "your" honey will end up in "their" top brood box.

Er excuse me but its 'their' honey in 'your' box!

 

[Finman]

Depending on how prolific your bees are, there is a risk that most of "your" honey will end up in "their" top brood box.

Yeah!

I use 3 brood and my honey is above the top brood box. The worst hives get 40 kg and the biggest 120 kg and sometimes even 200 kg.
It really depends on pastures. On bad pastures the same size hive gets 20 kg and on splended pastures 120 kg in 3 weeks at same time.

But if the big hive glows all the time and is ready to forage in August, other hives has brought then on average 60-80 kilos per hive.
Best hiuves get 70 kg even in June if they have rippened to mature hive very early.

If you take awayt a swarm from hive, then the hive gets nothing during next 2 months.



Good yield depends on pastures. Big hive=good queen makes the foraging capacity. Even lazy hive becomes mad to forage if pastures are good.

Yes, on poor or on empty pastures top brood brood box eates the yield, because brood are there, but it does not help if you put 5 small colonies on pastures. From nothing they get nothing.


I meet this if I put my hives on sandy forest area. It blooms what gives nectar not at all. Wide hay and corn fields have the same. Nothing. Bees must fly 1-2 kilometres before they see first flowers.

It is not bees fault if your yard site is miserable.

it is you who put hives there.

Another way:

I has a miserable colony after winter. It was in so bab condition in April that I did not opened it at all. Then about 15.7 I looked that waht is now there. Under the entrance there was a basket ball size cluster and the 3 box hive was full like a gun.

Yes, it rised from there but summer was then over.

Too small start is too slow to generate to a normal forager.

-

 

[Finman]

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I have nursed hives whole my life without excluder. I clean forest berries with excluder.

I really laugh when I read these writings.

Do you really believe that the position of the excludes commands what are you hives and how much you get honey.

It has been researched that the hives, without excluder or with it, makes the same yield from same pastures.

You have splended beekeeping skills. Then you draw away the excluder and all collapses? - Now, my pills....who took them?

OK, I found them

 

[itma]

Multibrood makes it harder to do a full inspection, but probably quicker to do a cursory inspection. Queen cells can usually be spotted by 'tipping' rather than removing all frames.
There is a mindset that goes with 'large' numbers of colonies where you can to some extent 'play the odds' rather than trying to make absolutely sure of everything. Multibrood and tipping can fit with that mindset.
Not saying right or wrong, just a different approach as compared to the typical hobby beek.

 

[Finman]

Multibrood makes it harder to do a full inspection, but probably quicker to do a cursory inspection. Queen cells can usually be spotted by 'tipping' rather than removing all frames. .

Tha hardest thing is lift full honey box from top. It contains 35 kg honey.
Even harder is get it back there.


Hard full inspection! Oh my . What a life.

 

[itma]

I use 3 langstrooth brood. I do not use excluder.

What I inspect, I see all necessary in the upper brood box. Nothing new in other boxes. ...

By "full inspection", I was specifically meaning more than you deem to be strictly necessary! - while trying to avoid the question of whether it was necessary.
"Harder" meaning requiring more time and care, more awkward rather than involving excessive physical effort.

 

[Finman]

"Harder" meaning requiring more time and care, more awkward rather than involving excessive physical effort.

Yes. Bees make the beek to work. That is not real life.

.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Er excuse me but its 'their' honey in 'your' box!

Or its my honey in my box.

 

[Ely]

I'm not really sure what size brood boxes people are talking about when discussing double brood. Double national isn't big at all. Slightly unclear. Also, surely it would be dependant on the forage available? For example, on a field of osr or in a garden away from crop fields.

 

[Hebeegeebee]

if young and fit like me not worried about weight but why do they do this in america ?

The size of the brood box will depend on the type of bee, weather, forage, length of season. If your bees don't need a double brood box, then there's no need to give them the space and make management more difficult. If you want to use deep frames in which the bees store the honey, that's up to you. I don't have a problem lifting 2 supers, some people might - especially if they are at head height. It's all about having a box that's suitable for the bees as well as yourself. Most people use queen excluders. Finman doesn't.

 

[Finman]

I don't have a problem lifting 2 supers, some people might - especially if they are at head height. .

I use often 6 supers and at least 4 supers.

My hives are at head height, not for stands, but for their 8-9 boxes.

My stands are 10 cm in summer.

 

[Fraise]

Finman - do you have a single entrance for such a big hive?

 

[Finman]

Finman - do you have a single entrance for such a big hive?

In main flow it has main entrance open. Then it has two upper entrance in brood boxes. Holes are 15 mm diameter. Then one hole perhaps in super.

Actually the lowest box is so cool that the queen moves to second and third box to lay. First box will be filled with pollen. And hive rear winter bees with pollen when August do not have enough floers to be foraged.

One secret is a big winter cluster. The pollen store in lowest box is important in that.

Pollen store comes in during main flow. It is possible to take some pollen frames for spring, and so you need not to give pollen patty in spring.

My Italians use to use oll store in rearing winter bees.


You propably think that you have allways pollen to be foraged ... but not during rain days and cold weathers.

.That is why bees make stores: for bad weathers. If you compare with wasps, they do not store but they fly in rain and in cold.

 

[richardbees]

I 've finally come to the conclusion that Finman builds-up a huge worker population on double bb because his foraging period is so short.

Maybe only 3 months whereas UK has 7 months?

 

[Finman]

I 've finally come to the conclusion that Finman builds-up a huge worker population on double bb because his foraging period is so short.

Maybe only 3 months whereas UK has 7 months?

Yes, foraging months are from 1.5 to 15.8. = 3,5 months

But your foraging.. You believe that they forage in cold and rain but they do not.

Your basic temp is low in those 7 months. That is why bees consume so much what they get.

This summer I saw that surplus will not come into hives if max temp is 20C or less. 40 hives in different places prove something.

If bees get 15 kg honey, they spent it during next rainy summer week. 3 rainy weeks...luckily they kick brakes then in brooding

Yield season is here 3-6 weeks. Depends what plants landscape has.
.
.

 

[blackie]

i think il run brood and a half then and see how it goes

 

[bee crazy]

I use 3 langstrooth brood. I do not use excluder.

What I inspect, I see all necessary in the upper brood box. Nothing new in other boxes.

When you "inspect" your hive, what you inspect there? They are very different thing what I look in Spring, in swarming time, in main flow and in late summer.

And when you inspect, you need not find a queen. It is enough if you see larvae and eggs.

I have to agree with finman, I now run langstroth dubble brood anything above the second brood nest is mine, the rest is left with the bees for winter it brings winter feeding bill down (not this year)