how to phase out old brood frames?

[MuswellMetro]

I would also do a shook swarm change and in London I do it at the end of March and feed lots of 1:1 syrup, so the date depends on your area

i do leave one old frame in the new hive for a time, thats the old frame the queen in on .

I put the frame that she is on to the south of the middle of the new box of frames, (this is easier than caging the queen over to the new box or trying to get her to jump on the new frames,( i have had one Queen fly off and abscond shaking her off)

after all is settled say 7 days [though you could leave it until hatched] i inspect and remove the old frame,

replacing it with a drone brood frame or smaller depth frame, again for drone brood ( in my case as i use 14x12 the smaller is a standard brood frame)

if i am just doing to the change frames ( i use fresh every three years) i put the brood in another hive that is on year two frames but add a super

 

[Skyhook]

This is a question to those who have contributed answers- As they have 5 brand new (autumn) drawn frames, why not do half- and half, ie put the 5 decent frames and 5 frames of foundation in a brood box, and shake the bees in off the manky frames?

 

[DanielSELondon]

Hi all,

I am wondering what people ended up doing and if anyone can share some ideas about how I should proceed. This is my situation:

I have a hive on double brood. Like the original poster here this hive contained five very dark and old original nuc frames that I want to remove from the hive. I have already:

swapped the boxes around (the newest box is now at the bottom) and has been there for 11 days or so. On my last inspection the queen had laid eggs in 4/5 frames. All is looking very healthy.

when I swapped the boxes I put the queen excluder between the brood boxes so that the queen couldn't continue to lay in the dirty frames. On my last inspection all the brood is capped in this box.

Once all the brood has hatched I intend to remove the old frames and replace them with foundation and to remove the queen excluder.

My question is this:

1) Should I place the old frames above a crown board (above the super) so that they can clean them out of pollen and any honey? or

2) Remove them all together straight away and melt down.

And another question:

Is there anything else I should do? For example, swap the boxes again?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.