Single national brood box

[oliver90owner]

Finny,

Some have difficulty extracting larger format frames. Leaving the bees to fill frames in the brood box may be OK at times and for some - for others, filling with OSR might leave the colony with lots of winter stores because the outer frames of OSR will granulate. If it happens to get shifted to supers later, the crop taken later in the year might be part-crystallised, too. Beekeepers need to think, not just give three brood boxes and expect an easy life if in an OSR region, per eg. That is if they expect, or want, a decent crop.

I do as you - no excluder, unless required for a good reason - but I can extract 14 x 12 frames without any bother. I don't extract any deeps, because I don't use them (very often). I will be using supers as brood boxes later this season, I think (but you might need to work that one out from another recent thread).

 

[Millet]

With the bees i have in there location on the Northumberland coast they are yet to expand out of a single national brood box, they have only ever used 9 of the 11 frames, i also do not use the Queen exluder and to date the queen has never gone up into the supers to lay and even with space in the supers they still swarmed into a bait hive and then tried to swarm again later on.

 

[B+.]

With the bees i have in there location on the Northumberland coast they are yet to expand out of a single national brood box,

I know this area very well. It is a very challenging area as far as bees go. What summer you do get can be short-lived with variable weather. You have my sympathies - whatever you try is going to be difficult.

 

[Finman]

Finny,

Some have difficulty extracting larger format frames. Leaving the bees to fill frames in the brood box may be OK at times and for some - for others, filling with OSR might leave the colony with lots of winter stores because the outer frames of OSR will granulate. If it happens to get shifted to supers later, the crop taken later in the year might be part-crystallised, too. Beekeepers need to think, not just give three brood boxes and expect an easy life if in an OSR region, per eg. That is if they expect, or want, a decent crop.

I do as you - no excluder, unless required for a good reason - but I can extract 14 x 12 frames without any bother. I don't extract any deeps, because I don't use them (very often). I will be using supers as brood boxes later this season, I think (but you might need to work that one out from another recent thread).

You have out there such problems that no one can help. Like that wrong extractor or wrong frame size.

In flexible system, for example, brood box is half full honey. You that box over the excluder, and bees fill and cover the rest.
Of you have old brood cmbs. You lift them over the excluder that bees emerge and they fiil the combs.

After these you put empty combs or foundations into the brood box and queen into it.

Beekeeping is just as difficult as you do it to yourself.

.