next step?

[sahtlinurk]

Hi,

as this hive system( national, smith. etc..)i am using now is a bit new to me then my question:

I got broodbox full of brood. every frame. probably the colony is now established itself ( swarm hived 14 of April) and new bees are born every minute.
With the old system i just added frames until the hive was full ( normally 22 frames, you call them top bar hives), I already put the super on but it doesn't solve the laying area problem. Another broodbox? As i started from from the scratch, i got only frames with foundation. no old combs. so the brood box would be only with foundation, this will cool the hive down..

Thanks,
Lauri

 

[Poly Hive]

Give them the 2nd brood box as soon as you can. If you take a couple or three frames of brood and put it in the top box and put foundation in the gaps below then they should romp on.

PH

 

[sahtlinurk]

made up a brood box out of two supers and put three brood combs in the middle, rest is foundation. empty gaps in the bottom had foundations as well. they should be busy now for a few weeks

Thanks,
Lauri

 

[Poly Hive]

well I would suggest no. That might be enough to keep them going for 10 days or so, and further you need to give serious consideration to making up a prober brood box for the combs as the spacing will not be right and trouble may well ensue.

Also you need to consider where are they going to store nectar. The ratio of nectar to honey is three to one. this colony should also have one it at least one super.

PH

 

[hedgerow pete]

why do you want to have two brood boxes, why do you not want one and supers full of honey and stores, why do you want to over fill with brood, you could either split and have another nuc instead. I would not go into double broods unless you enjoy inspecting twenty frames instead of ten.i personal cant see that a new swarmed hive would have filled ten frames from the 14th of april thats only what four weeks ago, my swarms do build up that fast

 

[sahtlinurk]

well, not believing is your problem. there was no room left for anything at he moment.

Cheers.
Lauri

 

[sahtlinurk]

Interestingly enough my two supers gave me exactly the size of brood box. they weren't as deep as normal ones and they had only eight very wide frames in. I will put the normal super on as soon as they build up the second brood box.

Thanks,
Lauri

 

[Bcrazy]

Hi hedgerow pete

Pete you mentioned about double brood chambers;

why do you want to have two brood boxes, why do you not want one and supers full of honey and stores, why do you want to over fill with brood

On my Nationals I use double brood chambers and on one Langstroth I have a double brood chamber. I first asses the strength of the queen in her laying ability. If I feel she is laying a good load of eggs and expanding well then I want her on to another brood chamber so there are hundreds of bees emerging on a daily basis. This in turn gives me a larger foraging force for one hive instead of having two smaller hives. The smaller the quantity of bees in a hive the less amount of honey they will produce.

Try it and see.

The only drawback is you have to ensure the queen is either in the box of open comb where the brood have emerged, that means either changing the position of the brood box or moving the queen down and the use of a QE comes into play.

With todays queens they need a bigger brood chamber than a single National as that hive was designed for the European Black Bee which many people still talk about. The EB Bee did not produce huge amounts of brood, it was mainly a steady flow but nothing like some of these hybrids we have nowadays.

Regards;

 

[BKF Admin]

Does anyone have problems whith swarm cells when using 2 brood boxes ?

I have heard a couple of people saying this year that they have found swarm cells in the bottom box when the queen is laying upstairs and has plenty of room.

Are queens not producing enough Pheremone this year ?

 

[Hombre]

I recently inspected a double Langstroth pollyhive that had a Queen cell in the top box and several in the bottom brood chamber. No QE.

Does this count?

 

[user 382]

Does anyone have problems whith swarm cells when using 2 brood boxes ?

I have heard a couple of people saying this year that they have found swarm cells in the bottom box when the queen is laying upstairs and has plenty of room.

I've had a similar problem. Last year I did a bailey comb change into a larger 14x12 box from a national box and found several queen cells in the old box after inserting the queen excluder to trap the queen up stairs.

 

[Bcrazy]

Posted by Admin

Does anyone have problems whith swarm cells when using 2 brood boxes ?

I have heard a couple of people saying this year that they have found swarm cells in the bottom box when the queen is laying upstairs and has plenty of room.

Are queens not producing enough Pheremone this year ?

This should not be a problem if inspections are carried out on a regular basis.

As we all know, that no single factor induces swarming.
Factors that should be taken into account are colony size, brood nest congestion, worker age and most significantly the reduction in Queen Pheromone.

So we know that lack of queen substance around the hive will induce queen cell building. Queen in upper brood chamber, then the poor bees in the lower chamber hardly receives any queen substance.

There are two types of pheromones that we can associate with bees.
Primer & Releaser pheromones are present in the hive at all times.
Primer – induces immediate response from the bees.
Releaser – these pheromones produce behaviour patterns, which are not immediate.
9-ODA is the releaser pheromone that the queen produces from her mandibular glands, and this causes the workers to begin building queen cells for swarming. (Plus other factors regarding swarming).

So using a double brood chamber could be another factor as it does not allow queen substance to be carried throughout the both brood chambers. That is why its advantageous to change the queen every two years, as her pheromone will be more volatile than an extra year down the line.


I don’t know how pheromones can be assessed to discover how strong the smell is. I suppose it must deteriorate with age as we do.

Regards;

 

[shonabee]

Does a strong colony in one hive (say in double brood box) produce more honey than 2 smaller colonies in 2 hives? Just out of interest? ... And you know my next questions will be "why?"