Restricted brood

[Maraldi Pyramid]

In East Sussex, I have a small colony occupying 7 National deep frames. The brood is surrounded by stores with, seemingly, nowhere for the queen to lay more eggs. Should I place an empty frame between the brood and stores? I have no drawn out comb, only foundation.

Thanks

 

[drstitson]

do the outer frames of brood have brood on both sides? if not you could bruise the stores on outer aspects and then put them back the other way around.

 

[Maraldi Pyramid]

Thanks, I'll check when conditions permit Have you done this successfully yourself?

 

[Poly Hive]

I certainly have, it is a tried and tested way of moving stores, and note this is for doing before adding supers so there is no chance of sugar going into your super.

Use the flat of your hive tool and make the cappings weep with honey, use pressure, and put them next to your brood nest and a week later you will be up by two frames.

I keep saying this you have to work your brood box.

PH

 

[drstitson]

no - it was tip given to me by polyhive.

you can also put new frames into midst of brood but not sure if foundation ok - drawn comb can be used.

how much honey arch do you have on your brood frames - you could bruise arch on a couple and swap them with central frames with more actual brood space.

having just read a few pages on web you can put foundation or starter frame in middle of brood - will expand brood AND delay swarming.

"Checkerboarding: Placing alternating frames of drawn and undrawn comb in the super directly above the brood chamber. The objective is to trick the bees into thinking there isn't enough honey stores to support swarming.

Opening the Brood chamber: Removing frames of honey from the brood chamber and replacing them with undrawn foundation. In a 10 frame hive the 2 outer frames (1 each side) are normally honey storage combs, the next ones in are usually predominately drone combs. By removing the storage combs and moving the next frames to the outside and then inserting the frames of foundation the bees are supposedly fooled into believing the brood nest is not completed and therefore reducing swarming tendencies. This is usually done in conjunction with supering.

If both systems are done at once the swarm tendency is reduced further. In a 2 deep or 3-4 medium brood box the storage frames from the brood chambers are used to checkerboard the super(s) just above the the brood nest. Essently the hive is 40-50 % undrawn combs, depending on whether deeps or mediums are being used.
It is my observation that these two systems, particularly when used together, work best in an all medium box management style. "

 

[drstitson]

from bush farms website:

"Opening the broodnest

This, of course is what we want to do. What we need to do is interrupt the chain of events. The easiest way is to keep the brood nest open. If you keep the brood nest from backfilling and if you occupy all those unemployed nurse bees then you can change their mind. If you catch it before they start queen cells, you can put some empty frames in the brood nest. Yes, empty. No foundation. Nothing. Just an empty frame. Just one here and there with two frames of brood between. In other words, you can do something like: BBEBBEBBEB where B is brood comb and E is an empty frame. How many you insert depends on how strong the cluster is. They have to fill all those gaps with bees. The gaps fill with the unemployed nurse bees who begin festooning and building comb. The queen will find the new comb and about the time they get about ¼" deep, the queen will lay in them. You have now "opened up the brood nest". In one step you have occupied the bees that were preparing to swarm with wax production followed by nursing, you've expanded the brood nest, and you've given the queen a place to lay. If you don't have room to put the empty combs in, then add another brood box. The other upside is I get good natural sized brood comb.

A hive that doesn't swarm will produce a LOT more honey than a hive that swarms.

Checkerboarding aka Nectar Management

Checkerboarding is a technique from Walt Wright that involves interspersing drawn and capped honey OVER the brood nest. It in no way involves the the brood nest itself. If you'd like to know about this technique and a LOT more detail about swarm preparation and what goes on in a hive at any given time in the buildup, I would contact Walt Wright. This is a method that also fools the bees into believing that the time has not yet come to swarm. It works without disturbing the brood nest. Basically it's putting alternating frames of empty drawn comb and capped honey directly ABOVE the brood nest. If you would like to purchase a copy of Walt's manuscript, it's about 60 pages long and last I heard was $8 in a pdf by email or $10 on paper. You can contact him at this address: Walt Wright; Box 10; Elkton, TN 38455-0010; or WaltWright_at hotmail dot com (Encoded to avoid the spambots. Don't forget the underscore).

Also there is more on checkerboarding here: Experiment"

 

[Foxylad]

I have a colony that will not move stores into a super, even though it has 6 drawn foundations inside.
I had a look today and there are now 4 full frames of uncapped honey in the brood box.
I am un willing to remove the QE as i am sure the queen will quickly lay in the super.
I have seen bees cleaning out cells in the super, but they havent stored a drop in there yet.
Has any one got a solution to free up space?

 

[Poly Hive]

sure you can use foundation. I use it all the time.

I used actually to get a frame of foundation drawn out when feeding in autumn.

LOL


PH