how to use snelgrove board

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paulgid

New Bee
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May 8, 2010
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Location
lincolnshire
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National
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hi all
i am planning on using the snelgrove board this year as i have only a small amount of space.i know you put queen in bottom broad box on a frame of broad and fill the rest of the space with foundation.and in the top broad goes the rest of the broad with two queen cells.it is the opening and clossing of the doors that iam not sure about.
thanks for any info.
regards paul
 
Here is another link, well search command. Use Google to search for the following:

Conwy beekeepers Snelgrove board

What it will show is a link to a power point presentation, "Four things to do with a Snelgrove board". I have found this document to be very useful.
 
thanks for quick reply.it is good info.
regards paul:)
 
Just use a split board with the entrance pointing in the opposite direction to the lower entrance......much less fuss.
 
This is my tenth post so the links will be on te next post. Then hopefully admin will remove the useless posts.
 
I am truly not sure why one would want to use the Snelgrove method as there are pitfalls, and even the man himself could not get it to work. Frankly it's a real faff.

Short of space? If you are so short you have no room for a nuc box then you want to have a serious think about the suitability of your location.

Swarmy hive? Find queen and with two frames of brood put in nuc box with a further shake of two or three frames of bees so they have a good population.

Main colony, go through the frames CAREFULLY esp checking between comb and side bars as they love to conceal cells there, and knock them ALL out apart from one OPEN and preferably the youngest cell you can find.

Leave both units to get on with it. If your virgin fails for some reason you still have a viable colony with the old queen as a back up, and the material in that nuc to act as a test frame provider.

No remembering to open the wee door and faff about with the bees, unless of course that is the attraction in which case we are never going to be on the same wave length.

PH
 
Try this....


Snelgrove designed a piece of equipment called a Snelgrove Board (the coincidences never cease!). A Snelgrove Board (SgB) is a piece of equipment very much like an inner cover with a few "extras".

Rather than a hole in the center of an inner cover, the SgB has a much larger opening that is double screened, hence a SgB is sometimes referred to as a double screen board.

Additionally, a SgB has entrances on three sides of the board on both top and bottom (six in total). The side with no entrances is the front of the board.

For later discussion imaging that the top entrances are numbered 1, 3 and 5 for the right, back and left entrances and the bottom entrances are numbered 2, 4 and 6 for the right, back and left respectively.

Towards the beginning of swarming season a SgB is used in combination with a queen excluder and hive manipulations on a double brood chamber colony to simulate a swarm while keeping both the parent population and swarming population combined at the same location!
How is this possible?

The hive manipulations consist of segregating the brood frames so those with eggs, larvae and brood are moved to the top hive body and empty frames are segregated to the lower body.

This is another technique that hinges on finding the queen. When she is found she is moved to the lower brood chamber on a frame of eggs, larvae and unsealed brood. This should be the only frame in the lower brood chamber with any stages of brood - all other frames in the lower brood chamber should be empty or contain only stores (pollen, nectar and honey).
Above the bottom brood chamber go a queen excluder, super(s), and the top brood chamber containing occupied brood frames.

Three days later the super(s) will be occupied and the nurse bees will have passed through the queen excluder to the brood frames in the top chamber.
At this point in time the SgB is inserted with entrance 1 open - all other entrances on the SgB are closed. For the next few days, field bees from the top brood chamber will exit through entrance 1 and join the population below the SgB by using the original front entrance.

One week after the initial manipulation the beekeeper closes entrance 1 and opens entrances 2 and 5. Thus, the bees from the top brood chamber that "graduated" to field bees return to and reinforce the lower population by using entrance 2.

During the next week the top brood chamber bees that become field bees will get accustomed to using entrance 5. While the bees in the lower chamber use either the original front entrance or entrance 2.

At the end of the second week the beekeeper closes entrances 2 and 5 and opens entrances 3 and 6. Again the top brood chamber field bees reinforce the lower population by returning to the left hand lower entrance (entrance 6) and the top back entrance (entrance 3) becomes the top brood chamber's main entrance.

By using the entrances in the SgB in a round- robin fashion, the top brood chamber becomes a "bee generator" for the lower colony.

The top brood chamber, being queenless and initially containing all the eggs, larvae and brood will immediately commence to raise a new queen. However, the top brood chamber will not swarm because the population never reaches sufficient numbers to cast a swarm. The bottom chamber never swarms because the brood rearing cycle was interrupted by the initial manipulations.
This method artificially casts a swarm from a colony, keeps both populations in a single unit, effectively sets up a two queen colony, and leaves a requeened colony at the end of the season when the upper and lower chambers are reunited.
 
I believe that there is a place for a Snelgrove - the whole idea, as I see it, is to ensure that the flying bees continue to provide a harvest whilst the Q gets on with building a new colony. You get a new Q in the top and can later combine with no honey lost and a new young Q into the bargain. I did not bother with overdoing the opening and shutting of too many doors but found it was excellent using just one to bleed the flyers back to the bottom box. The draw back is that once you have 3 or more supers you are building quite a tower and inspection of the bottom BB is not so easy
 
I use Snelgrove boards every year
Very simple method
You need less equipment because of the shared roof floor etc
Easy risk free way to increases colony numbers
Improves the chances of a good crop
controls swarming
By opening hive less they are good in a garden for neighbourhood relations :)
 
Drone Ranger

really - on all 25 hives?

I tried Snelgrove but couldn't see any advantage over bog standard AS method, following Ted Hooper's technique i.e. switching the original bb to the other side after a week
 
Opening and closing a few doors is a lot easier than swapping a hive from one side to the other.
 
Drone Ranger

really - on all 25 hives?

I tried Snelgrove but couldn't see any advantage over bog standard AS method, following Ted Hooper's technique i.e. switching the original bb to the other side after a week

Hi richardbees
Yes pretty much all except the ones which were created this year
The difference is using an AS you need two sets of everything ie floor crown board roof etc
Using a board you still need two brood boxes but just one roof one floor etc.
If anything goes wrong or you don't want increase its easy to recombine the bees as they act like one colony
Doesn't suit everybody though so each to his own as they say :)
 

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