Pros & cons of 14 x12 brood

[browncow]

Hi everyone,
New to this forum and in my 3rd year of beekeeping.
I have national hives and I am thinking of altering my brood boxes to 14x12 as I have heard that it may help in the prevention of my biggest concern, swarming.
Any advice would be much be appriciated.

BC

 

[drstitson]

may help vs swarming. also when full better set for winter. easier to use than B+1/2.

however still need to work out what is going wrong wrt swarm control. method? timing? race of bee?

please enlighten us further for better response.

 

[Luminos]

Welcome to the forum browncow
I would be interested in the responses, too, as my spare hive is 14x12

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

Pros (as doc says):
Less likely to get cramped, therefore (should be) less urgency to swarm
More room for stores over winter
Less need to go to brood & half/double brood

Cons:
Heavier frames
Easier to miss the queen/queen cells

 

[oliver90owner]

Welcome to the forum.

Changing to 14 x 12 simply gives a larger brood box without resorting to multiple boxes. May avoid bood-and-a-half or double brood boxes. I still find at times some of my queens need to lay upstairs. I don't use queen excluders through all the summer season

Without adequate laying space one is encouraging early swarming and early spring build-up can easily be retarded by a shortage of laying space in strong colonies.

We don't know whether you are having problems with really prolific queens and single broods, whether this is an apparent or real concern (perhaps 'problem' would be a better term), or is the only real concern, even.

I moved to14 x 12 for the following reasons:

Larger brood area. I started with Nationals and WBCs and the WBCs were obviously too small!
No need for over-wintering on brood and a super.
I believe one box wintering to be preferable.
Better with OMF, if only running with a single brood over winter.
Easier inspections (than two brood boxes).

I have found I generally get larger colonies going into winter, probably due to the bees doing their own thing in the autumn (no rush from me to fill the brood box with stores).

Downsides of occasionally having too much stores left after winter - brooding on all frames (with stores in one half of each frame!).
Getting all foundation fully drawn.
Finding an elusive queen.
Removing that first frame (when 12 Hoffmans are squeezed in).
Frame lug breakage, when inadvertently over-stressed.
Moving hives.

There may be more up-sides and down-sides, but that will do at present.

I run 14 x 12s and Dartingtons. All are top bee space (bee space have up- and down-sides too). Suits me. I use flat ply sheets as crownboards and wire excluders.

I am overwintering some on ten frames and two insulated dummies, this year. Intention is to remove dummies and insert drawn comb very early on, to get them ready for the OSR flow. It may be very soon unless winter arrives at last!!

Regards, RAB

 

[DanBee]

A single national brood box is very small anyway. A strong colony will need three times that space for its brood nest at the peak of the season.

Do not be tempted to add a super as a brood box, even in the short term, as this is a horrible compromise known as 'brood and a half'. You end up with two sizes of brood frame that you can't reorganise between boxes. Your consideration should be either to move to a single larger brood box, or to go with multiple brood boxes (of the same size).

14 x 12 is one option for a larger brood box; another is Modified Commercial. To go either way requires new boxes, frames, and foundation. Either box will weigh about the same when full of bees or honey, i.e. half as much again as a full National brood box.

Commercial shares the same footprint with National and is bottom bee space too, so your investment in National floors, crown boards, roofs, supers, etc. is not wasted. The Commercial brood box has virtually the same comb area as the 14 x 12, but crucially its deep frames (sometimes referred to as 16 x 10) will fit in most extractors, even small ones. Commercials use short frame lugs, so you need to learn to hold frames by their sidebars rather than by the 'handlebars', but this is not a big deal.

Multiple brood boxes requires different approaches to inspections, and you need to be more experienced and confident with routine manipulations and with finding the queen before contemplating this. Hives also start to get larger quite rapidly, which you may view as a good thing or a bad thing.

 

[Mike a]

For the newer bee keepers reading this thread

Each strain of bee behaves differently, some build up quickly compared to others in Spring as well as some strains are more prone to swarming than others. If the colony isn't inspected regularly every 6 - 10 days the size of the brood chamber makes little to no difference at all. Once a colony reaches its critical mass they will make preparations to swarm.

Although it may seem be a good idea to move to a larger brood chamber it won't prevent the colony from swarming, only possibly delay it for a few days to a few weeks whilst there is still room to expand in to.

This is my version of a Dartington long hive. In effect its two 14x12 brood chambers side by side and it takes 25 deep national 14x12 frames, which is more than enough space for approximately 200,000+ bees as there is additional space between the bottom of the frames and the mesh floor.
To date the largest colony I've had in it used 14 frames before they decided to start building queen cells.

Size isn't every thing...

 

[Finman]

Hi everyone,
it may help in the prevention of my biggest concern, swarming.

BC

I would say that frame size has nothing to do with swarming.
Free space in the hive is important.

Small hives are difficult because they will be full of honey in couple days and then the colony swarms without warning.

Swarming is a big issue. There are two phases: preventing and cutting the swarming fever.

http://agdev.anr.udel.edu/maarec/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Swarm_Prev_Control_PM.pdf

If you take queens from swarms cells, they will surely swarm next summer.

.

 

[oliver90owner]

Size isn't every thing...

Quite right but there is the difference.
Fourteen 14 x 12 brood frames is the maximum I have been led to believe would be occupied in a Dartington - about the same as twenty deeps or about thirty shallows.

I know which order they would likely swarm if a prolific strain were put in just one box - first a single shallow, next a single deep and lastly the 14 x 12.

Simply stands to reason if overcrowding/laying space is the factor leading to swarming.

RAB

 

[drstitson]

"To date the largest colony I've had in it used 14 frames before they decided to start building queen cells."

"Fourteen 14 x 12 brood frames is the maximum I have been led to believe would be occupied in a Dartington."

Is that actively working the brood a la PH or allowing "passive" expansion of the broodnest?

Anyone tried checkerboarding in a Dartington?

 

[Dave /Oscroft]

14x12

Ive still had swarms from 14x12's !!! they are Carnies though !

Dave W

 

[victor meldrew]

Ive still had swarms from 14x12's !!! they are Carnies though !

Dave W

2011 Spring time weather caught me out a couple of times (14x12s)
Normal swarm control must still be exercised .
VM

 

[Nic Rhodes]

downside really is the fragility of the frame and you can't hold horizontal (if you do that) when the frame is heavy. The bees also often leave a gap at the bottom for some reason but generally I am a big fan. I moved to 14 x 12 up here due to brood shape (in wood), I used 16 x 10 Commercials down south as the brood ball was a different shape. In poly it is all different!

 

[victor meldrew]

downside really is the fragility of the frame and you can't hold horizontal (if you do that) when the frame is heavy. The bees also often leave a gap at the bottom for some reason but generally I am a big fan. I moved to 14 x 12 up here due to brood shape (in wood), I used 16 x 10 Commercials down south as the brood ball was a different shape. In poly it is all different!

I've never had a frame sag yet!
The way to make bees draw comb down to the bottom corners is to use a box of frames of foundation as a first super .
If you have no means of extracting 14x12s frames, save them for making up nucs or feeding to colonies light on stores .
VM

 

[Nic Rhodes]

done all that many times, doesn't make any difference . Many frames just not filled to bottom. I don't extract 14 x 12 as I don't have a suitable extractor but frames used later for nucs / winter feed etc instead. re sagging I just don't hold large frames (14 x 12 or LS jumbo / Dadants), unsupported frames horizontally (TBH, unwired etc).

 

[psafloyd]

Going to try one with my main hive as only third year for this queen and quite prolific.

Have it on order with one of our resident artisans.

 

[Illo]

All the up sides reported here I would agree with. Another down side that I have experienced with the 14x12... To aid the stability of the frames (presumably) there is no choice but to use hoffmans. My bees make propolis for England and stick the whole length of the frame spacing angles together in a couple of days. Getting the frames out for inspection is difficult at best, and destructive at worst, and that's with 11 and a dummy board in for a bit of extra space to manipulate.

That said, with the limited space in a national, and double brood being such a faff, I wouldn't change. There will always be pros and cons and it may be a small price to pay compared with running out of space too quickly.

LJ.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Multiple brood boxes requires different approaches to inspections, and you need to be more experienced and confident with routine manipulations and with finding the queen before contemplating this.

This is my personal favourite choice of management,much faster,and more efficient than single brood chamber management.

 

[Mike a]

"To date the largest colony I've had in it used 14 frames before they decided to start building queen cells."

"Fourteen 14 x 12 brood frames is the maximum I have been led to believe would be occupied in a Dartington."

Is that actively working the brood a la PH or allowing "passive" expansion of the broodnest?

For most of time I allowed them to expand to their own natural number of frames, the outer face of the 14th was only used to store a small amount of wet honey before it was moved or consumed. I later moved this frame inwards to get both sides drawn out fully, which they did very quickly.

Anyone tried checkerboarding in a Dartington?

I didn't try this by adding another chamber above, as I was trying to get them to expand sideways which was a waste of time, each time I placed a new or drawn frame within the 14 the outer face of the new 14th frame was slowly cleared of its contents.

As for the brood nest the queen I used wasn't that prolific she only laid a rugby ball shaped cluster of eggs across 9-10 frames (none of which were full width of the frame) starting on the inside face of frame 2, frame 1 was used for honey and some pollen.
(Hope this makes sense?)

 

[Finman]

.
If you have 100 hives like Hivermaker, you need not advices any more

My advice for swarming is:

- big hives swarm first- what ever hive may swarm - weekly checking
- when you see queen cells, make at once false swarm with foundations, not drawn combs
- before that clip the queen's wing

first of all, take care that the hive has allways space for enlargening colony and incoming nectar

- if you use swarming cell queens, you can be sure that you get next summer swarms.....it is their natural habit

- non swarming is the result of human selection and a gene mistake from bee's view point.


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