New hives for today's superbee

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hedgerow pete

Queen Bee
Joined
Jan 26, 2009
Messages
3,648
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Location
UK, Birmingham, Sandwell. Pork scratching Bandit c
Hive Type
National
i have stuck a few notes on another thread about starting the road to commercial working, i have been down there several times my self when you have spent as much time as i have with commercial breeders etc you start to see week areas of thier business where i could fit into, or adapt, yes i would love to but and this is the only reason why i have not dropped every thing and gone bee keeping is to me its a passion not a living there is a differance for me, i will proberly build up to 25 hives over the next year ready for the 2010 season which is where i want to be and to run with, i am more interested in breeding rather than production, brother adam has placed many great big thought in my head which i would love to work with, as for the accounts i have published they are amounts made by hard work and help from another who has far to much enthusiam
 
I suspet down the line Pete that Brother Adam is going to be seen as a major drawback and not a plus for British Beekeping.

why a geneticist of his genius thought he could create a strain that was stable from the mix that he used baffles me.

Further and this is one he is very guilty of was his sweeping statement that the British AMM was wiped out by Acarine. What utter codswallop of a statement from a (I believe ) teenage novice in Devon who in all likely hood by that stage had not travelled out of the south west of the UK if even that.

I believe he did us all a serious dis-service accidentally.

PH
 
i must admit your words ring true poly hive but where i want to play and it is play, i have several nucs and two full colonys of dark european bees, old english blacks to say. what i want to try and do is breed some good quality bee queens so i can continue using them any may be just maybe there could be the chance of improving there productivity from average to above average, nowhere near these super duper bees admitily, but i like the older type of bee it suits my style of bee keeping, so do by the way wbc hives 12 by 14 nationals and NO OIL SEED RAPE, sad but true.

After 20 odd years pottering about with bees i have come to know exactly what style of bee and beekeeping i want to follow and it is a more knowledge seeking sort rather than commercial, but the ideas behind the two threads i have started are to help other s who are thinking about making a little more effort and may be a little more money, and the other one is because i an fasinated by these new super duper bees everyone is going on about in the forum and how they cant be restrained on a simple box but the need two or finmans three.

As a practicaly minded person it seems to me that one box is far better than two and three, and stop going on about supers i was just concerned that the brood box was becoming to small and would the design of a larger brood box and its requirements on how to do it.

I was exspecting an arguement on cell numbers with people going for 150,000 some for 200,000,I am sure finman would find a link for 500,000 cells, but from the cell count we could then say would we want 10 ,15 or 20 frames and these figures would lead us onto the diamentions so we could then build one at the bee shed and we could put forward ideas of manipulations and if i build it with removable panels we can have a web based disscussion with a practical out comes.

I was willing to buy and build every thing and then to allow everyone to have there say and to then perform the act or task required by the majority and then we can disscuss why so and so happened when we though the opposite would work.

i seem to find with many beeks over the whole world over there are those that still think the world is flat and why change anything and then there are those who have just walked back from the other side of the world with ideas and knowledge but are not quite sure what they know and what use it is or why the bees do what they do, i find at times this is not the forum it could be but a forum of down putters or cowards

now that i have started world war three and a half iam off up the bee shed ttfn
 
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From the discussions so far, it seems to me, that what it boils down to, ... is ...

how big a brood frame do you want to handle ??

As a relative beginner I find 14x12 as big as I feel confident with. But ....

Maybe experienced handlers could manage a frame 2 feet wide and 2 feet deep ? ... if you think you're hard enough then give it a go ! I think it would be ok if it was properly made, say with a top bar an inch square. As far as foundation is concerned, then I think the frame would be pre-wired with two diagonals to act as braces, rather like an old bi-plane wing. That would hold it rigid and other wires could support the sheets of wireless foundation attached in sections by heat, say 4 of them 12"x12". 15 of these frames could provide room for 250,000+ bees. The weight of each frame would be about the same as four 14x12 frames, so still be ok for a competent person.

So, the brood chamber is approx 600x600x600mm. .... What about the supers ?? ... I suggest a super box might be 600long x 300wide x 150deep, and they would fit on top of the bb side by side in pairs. The weight of each full super would be slightly less than a normal national super.

All this seems eminently practical to me if you want really big colonies of bees and less work.

JC.
 
at last someone sees the light, yes i also belive that for these newer better bees something along these lines could be needed, i like the idea of a frame 600 square but may we shold start with some say 600mm by 4500mm deep that sheet alone would produce 60cm times 45cm equals 2,700 square cm and four cells per cm and on both sides would produce a frame capable of holding a posible 21,600 lose say 10% for wires and corners etc we have a fixed frame able to hold 19,440cells that is almost one third of a standard national brood box , then shall we say that a normal hoffman is 38 mm wide so we have the ability in a 600mm square box (600 divided by 38 equals 15. 7) so lets have 15 frames and a dumy board 15 frames times 19,440 equals a brood box of 291,600 cells which is around the size that finman thinks is needed plus another brood box spare ( langstroff box 72,000 cells ours is around four time that size) so does this mean this could be posible or is there someone out there that would say against it for any reason whats so ever i want to know why though not just no
 
I like the idea of a cube for a brood box ...... 525x525x525 is the same volume as 600x600x450 .....

But, ..... on a big hive I like the idea of super boxes used side by side in pairs so .... use supers 525x262x200mm ... they're still lighter than normal nats, because there's only seven frames in each of them.

You read about it here first folks !

JC.
 
Blimey, Bloomin Big Skep needed then for when they swarm!
 
p.s. This is quite exciting !! ... do you all realize a hive 525x525x525mm ......

IS ONLY TWO AND A HALF INCHES BIGGER ACROSS THAN A 14X12 NATIONAL !!!

There has GOT to be something in this idea !

Maybe we should move the posts to a different thread, Admin ?

JC.
 
You are overlooking just one small detail,a colony will only reach a certain size,ie number of bee's,then no Queen will have enough pheromone to hold it together,they will swarm,no matter how big the hive is.
 
I like the idea of a cube for a brood box ...... 525x525x525 is the same volume as 600x600x450 .....

But, ..... on a big hive I like the idea of super boxes used side by side in pairs so .... use supers 525x262x200mm ... they're still lighter than normal nats, because there's only seven frames in each of them.

You read about it here first folks !

JC.

Just thinking out loud here but how do you see a colony over wintering in a box that big? I can understand that what is being talked about is an attempt to scale up the BB to suit a new breed of bee and it may well be that they will over winter with more bees, but then they will need more stores....?

What if your bees are not quite 'super bee' but more prolific then AMM's, would you need a size of BB in-between?

Just thinking it over, that's all.....:grouphug:

Mike.
 
You are overlooking just one small detail,a colony will only reach a certain size,ie number of bee's,then no Queen will have enough pheromone to hold it together,they will swarm,no matter how big the hive is.

I agree I'm hypothesizing, but don't agree with your detail. The size of bb needed depends on the bees. That's the whole reason for this consideration.

If they're ok in 3 lang bbs, then they'll be ok in 1 bb 2.5 inches bigger than a nat 14x12.

JC.
 
Just thinking out loud here but how do you see a colony over wintering in a box that big?
Mike.

I did consider this. I reckon the solution is to lag the box during winter with external panels of 25mm cheap polystyrene sheet tacked on with a stapler. It should be better than polyhives (less dense, better insulation) and much cheaper. (two layers on the roof !).

JC.
 
I find that if they are prolific double brood nationals work well,rotating box's,keeps all the congestion out of the box the Queen is laying in,she allways has room,and all the little cell building pests are up top(of the supers) out of the way.
As season progresses,and queen laying reduces this top box full of new combs is used to build up the nuc's for winter.
 
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it does not matter a jot what size the brood box is it can be ten foot square if you want all the bbes will do is group in one lump some where, so the larger cube should be the way to go and we must have the two super idea, that sounds great, this is why i was banging on aboiut the darlington ideas , as in his drawing book it shows his supers as a five frame box not a mmassive ten
 
lets look at this way if we increase our frames to 525 ccube this will confuse some people but we realy must keep an eye on the cells because at the end of the day thats what we are judged on not diamentions a single frame of 525 x 525 will have 2,756 square centimetres of space each cm holds 4 cells each side so we have 22,050 cells per sheet both sides and at 38 mm across the hoffmans there will be 19 frames across and a dumy board so 19 frames times 22,050 cells equals 418,950 cells per brood box minus ten percent for wires and dead cells say a total of 414,761 thats almost what four times of a dadant which is a massive box, and as a square shape should help with queen smell dispersal, and as was already said not nuch larger than a 12 by 14 frame overall size wise so we still have easy handling, i was wooried that we were going to need lifting gear to do inspections with my largest frames which were 600mm square
 
Ooops - clang .... sorry Pete but your digits have tripped up .......

There are indeed 22,000 cells per frame but there are 13 frames, not 19, in a 525 box.

This means the brood capacity is in the order of 13 x 22,000 cells = 286,000 cells in total.

Realistically I reckon 12 frames in the brood, and 6 in each super would be "the bees knees".

JC.
 
sorry was in a rush to get back out to the bee shed when i was running through the posts, you are right it is indeed 13 but even so that still allows 286,000 cels minus the waste of 28,600 that will give us a brood box containing 257,400 which is the equivilant of around two and ahalf lang brood boxes so we still need i thing to make the boxes hold at least three langstroffs if not more why not allow for my grandsons uber bees so why not try to find some thing around the 280,000 cell size finished
 
we started with that as the base starting point and it is on its own right a very good hive end of, but what i was looking for was other people input, i can easily build a flippin great big thing and play for years on my own but why not take a short cut and ask for help from others and see what there point of views are, one person i was talking to pointed out that maybe all new super bee hives should have a solar powered fan on the floor or the lid and to help spread the queen smell around the boxes ans this will help to prevent swarming, so as well as cell size i am open to any helpfull suggestion evan solar powered fans
 
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