easy mistake to make!

[enrico]

Took frame of eggs and brood out of good hive and put it in Q- hive. Filled the gap with an undrawn frame. Never thought and out that frame in the centre of the hive. This caused some confusion and the queen only laid frames to one side of this new frame giving her half the room she would normally have.
Moral of the story ... if you remove a frame of brood and replace it with a fresh frame always add it at the end.... No lasting harm done but another tip worth remembering!
E

 

[enrico]

sorry about my spelling in this thread. should have read it before I posted it!!

 

[thurrock bees]

and if its a cold night the bees might only cover half the brood and get chilled brood on the other side.

 

[MJBee]

However if it is warm and there is a good flow on, a frame of foundation placed in the centre of the brood area will be drawn and have eggs in it within a week.

Did just that last week

 

[m100]

However if it is warm and there is a good flow on, a frame of foundation placed in the centre of the brood area will be drawn and have eggs in it within a week.

But that breaks all the 'rules'

I did it last year for the very first time. Apart from the lack of propolis deposits a week and a bit later the new frame looked identical to ones that had been in there for over a year. They must have pulled the foundation out really, really quickly as I had well developed larvae.

 

[Chris Luck]

In my experience, especially here in France, new frames are always placed in the centre and older frames moved outwards, works perfectly in my experience so I'm not sure what rules it breaks, in fact I have found it boosts the colony activity, so with MJ.

Chris

 

[RoseCottage]

I have always been told never split the brood nest as this may cause the queen issues. Some of these have already been mentioned - isolating half the brood from the queen and cooling of the brood left alone.
Apparently brood nest splitting doesn't take place in the wild.
Sam

 

[Chris Luck]

Apparently brood nest splitting doesn't take place in the wild.

No, that's right it doesn't, nor does the removal of old comb as practised in Warré and TBH and I take the point, but almost all bee keeping has varying degrees of interference apart from colonies that are kept just for the sake of it or perhaps for creating swarms. Equally removing brood comb doesn't occur in the wild and it does seem that here, (in France), the practise that I have seen is to put new frame(s) in the centre AND as I said it works well at this time of year, (May / July), when the bees are very strong and the weather is warm / hot. As Mike says, they will draw it in days.

Chris

 

[jasonahood]

But why would you take the risk for the sake of moving the frames along...

 

[tidymeup]

I see no problem at all with splitting the brood as long as the colony is of a decent size with bees to cover the frames and the wether is suitable.

 

[terryme]

Surely it is impossible to say the splitting of the brood would not happen in the wild or naturally? That doesn't take into account the fact that bees and their brood and honey would be subject to predators and foragers and colonies would most likely need repair/rebuilding of their comb in all areas at any point. The natural state would not be one of perfect peace with bees undisturbed by outside influence - that is not natures way. They would be under pressure and perhaps attack and have natural strategies to deal with this - survival and adaptation is natures way.

 

[jasonahood]

Yes, but saying that bee's can cope with something because they might get attacked in the wild doesn't mean that it's a good practice in general bee keeping... surely!

 

[terryme]

No of course not, but the fact there is good anecdotal evidence that bees can often cope with this sort of relatively minor variation in technique would mean it can be classified as not serious mismanagement. As it was first offered - a tip rather than a hard and fast rule.

 

[drstitson]

splitting brood may break the rules but who's to say the old rules are right.

adding frame (or more) of new foundation/starter strip is a good way to expand brood area and reduce swarming tendency.

i expect PH will be along with an experienced perspective any moment.

 

[Chris Luck]

That doesn't take into account the fact that bees and their brood and honey would be subject to predators and foragers and colonies would most likely need repair/rebuilding of their comb in all areas at any point.

That would be extremely rare in the Countries that I have experience of in Europe, there is almost zero chance of the few potential predators gaining access to what we are calling a wild or feral colony, (feral is an erroneous term in the case of bees but hey ho). What predators there are, (perhaps badgers, black woodpeckers?), would be far more likely to gain access to a hived colony. Wax moth could cause some comb damage but would be unlikely to be substantial in a strong colony that deals with them and not in the brood area anyway unless the colony is already failing.

Chris

 

[terryme]

In terms of global evolution of the bees over millennia, not in relatively recent years eg since mankind started fiddling with bees and nature in general, then yes there would have been predator threats that bees have evolved to cope with.

 

[Chris Luck]

Can you name some Terry?

Also, slightly not on topic but it follows on, I'm intrigued as to what happened following the retreat of the last glaciation, where did "our" European bees come from, certainly not the bees we now call Italian.

Chris

 

[terryme]

Just off the top of my head bears are current/recent predators in Europe - they are known to be brood predators - but this is getting to be a silly specific side issue to the main topic - this is me signing off!

 

[richardbees]

I've found that bees tend to co-operate as long as it's done in perfect weather/honey flow.

e.g. I wanted some eggs so put a National frame with foundation and the bottom bars removed into the centre of the brood in a National bb. Three days later they'd drawn a six inch wide crescent of comb half filled with eggs, together with matching "wild comb" underneath..

 

[m100]

But why would you take the risk for the sake of moving the frames along...

Because bees are reluctant to draw comb at the edge of a box. In the supers you can swap frames around, in the brood box 'going by the rules' you can end up with new frames and foundation going stale after a few weeks and that will never get drawn.

Putting new ones in the middle during a heavy flow works, and it means you can either bank a stores frame from the edge for future use, or extract from it, or scrap it.

Do it with a less than strong colony, or if the nectar flow suddenly stops, or the weather changes drastically and you probably will have problems.