Replacing brood comb

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Chris Nother

Increasingly addicted!
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Location
Howth, Co. Dublin, Ireland
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National
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Planning to replace brood comb - 30% a year - what is the best time of year and the best way?

Presuming early spring when little brood in the hive. Position frames to be replaced towards the outside of the box so that they are not laid in and then switch out for new foundation. Given that my colonies were purchased as nucs this year and I (rightly or wrongly) placed the nuc frames two frames back from the front, then my oldest frames are near the centre so I need to somehow move them toward the outside without splitting the brood.

Best times of year and correct steps to follow would be much appreciated!
 
There's splitting the brood and splitting the brood. If the frames are towards the centre, there's no harm at this time of the year just swapping two frames over, so let's call the centre frame of the cluster frame 6, and your brood is on frames 2 to 9 so you have eight frames of brood, one inspection you can lift out frame six shuffle the frames along and put it between frames 4 and five, or you can safely take frames 9 or 2 and pop them in the centre thus moving the 'dirty' frames outwards at each inspection.
Splitting brood only gets to be an issue with some people, at the beginning of the year, with a slowly building colony just slamming a frame of foundation slap bang in the middle.
Manipulating the btood to encourage expansion is preacticed by many, but takes experience and getting the 'feel' for the colony. There's no harm in moving the odd frame around, as long as you don't go in there, take the middle, most brood heavy frame out and place it right at the very edge of the cluster.
 
If you use the Rose Hive Method the comb is automatically replaced every 2 years.
 
So simple. On each inspection take one frame out of one end. The next frame gets inspected and goes back in the space, where you just removed one from. All the frames move down one space and the first frame you took out either gets replaced or goes in the other end. Over a period of time a slow conveyor belt system like this gets the centre frames to the outside. By then the brood is generally centered by the bees again so the outside frames are stores that you can remove before swapping the frame. I have done it for years and it works well, means you always have room to inspect the next frame as there is a gap. Has little or no effect on brood.
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