I am located in the Adelaide Hills and have a Technoset plastic hive with one brood box and a honey super of 10 frames each installed. We installed our bees on the 29/10 and our most recent hive inspection shows an empty honey super and a brood box of approximately 6 frames of drawn comb and some good stores of capped honey and brood being put down on the middle 4 frames. Just wondering in our climate, if/when we should consider adding a second brood box. Should we wait until all the frames in both boxes are drawn?
Take the super off and wait till all the frames in the brood box are drawn and you have 6/7 frames solid with brood. Then you can add a super or another brood box. How many broods do your neighbours run? That’s a good indicator of whether you need another brood box or go straight on to supering.
You are overstretching your hive. Take the super off and let them build up in the broodbox. There is a rule of thumb that you don’t expect a harvest in the first year of a hive, that year is for the hive to grow. When all frames in your broodbox are built out then you can add your second one by honeycombing your frames. You may consider feeding them for a while to boost them along as well, summer is a brutal time for our hives.
that would be my question also. I am very happy running single brood hives in SA. So much easier to inspect the brood. The bees overwinter fine in a single brood here in Adelaide.
Two broods are a great time saver for queen cell checking. Tip and look, 30 seconds. Great for splits too. No need to find queen take one box away and it’s done.
They are definite advantages- as well as perhaps less chance of swarming- and more chance of a super colony when the flow is on. But it comes at a cost: more equipment- harder brood inspections- more work- harder and much heavier to move, harder to find the queen and more disruptive when inspecting? It just seems in some climates single broods do very well and are more easily managed?
Last month we had a talk at our Bee society from commercial apiarists with 30 years experience and 1500 hives in regional South Australia. They run all single broods and do very well.
Later on I will experiment with double broods but for the moment I am happy to continue as is.
True it’s difficult to manage 2 brood set ups. It took a while, but now my 2 brood Italians are really bringing in the nectar. They are probably harboring a few honey frames down there. Haven’t checked them in 4 weeks.
In 3 days I will take 2 splits from that hive and reduce it back to one broodbox.
Hoping the queen will go down into the lower broodbox when I smoke them a lot. She’s always hard to find, but managed to take a split from her a while back by shaking the frames I wanted to take free of bees and put those frames in a separate box above the QX for an hour, so the nurse bees went up. Worked like a charm.
I sure like 1 broodbox set ups. Easier to inspect.
Another good reason for using single brood boxes is when a colony develops a bit of attitude. That came to mind this morning while weakening out a strong colony that had a barely manageable amount of attitude. I was glad it was only a single brood box.
If it’s a strong colony anyone wants, a single brood box will be sufficient. Even a single 8 frame brood box.
I got a flow hive for Christmas, still haven’t painted it yet, but a beekeeper here in the Adelaide hills told me that you can’t leave the super on over winter because the honey will crystallise and you’ll never get the flow frames open ever again.
So my question is… if you’re using one brood box, do you leave the super on over winter? Or take it off?
I agree, it is a good idea to take it off if you have a long period with no nectar flow. If you think the bees may need more food than they will have in the single brood box, you have two choices. Either you can feed them, or you can let them fill an ideal super above the Flow super, and leave that on for them (without the queen excluder) over winter. Quite a few Aussies with cooler winters do this.
Thanks Dawn. So an ideal super is a half depth one, right? Pardon my ignorance.
In that case, is the procedure to let the brood box fill to about 80% and then put the ideal super on with queen excluder, then when that’s getting full, the flow super. Anything that’s capped in the flow becomes mine, if I’m lucky.
Then in winter, remove flow, clean and dry and store. Remove queen excluder under ideal super and keep fingers crossed for the winter?
That sounds like a good way to do it. If you have a long nectar flow season, you can even put the traditional super on top of the Flow super once the bees have almost filled the plastic Flow frames. You should have good success with doing it the way you described too.
Thanks Dawn. From what I’ve read on this site, the flow is spasmodic here, all depends on which gum trees are flowering this year, I think so putting the ideal super on top might be optimistic…but that is all in the future, First…paint hive…do course…register hive…buy bees…cross fingers!
Hiya chibe, I use 2 brood boxes, a full depth and a size called WSP which is about 3/4 full depth (our only option here in WA). Most over here only use 1 brood box but I use 2 to ensure stores in the colony. I find the 2nd box generally has more honey than brood and never harvest them but never need to feed them either. I use 8 frame boxes which, as pointed out to me here on the forum, has 20% less frames than a 10 frame box so I’ve added that 20% above to aim for a populous colony. It does take longer to build the colony before adding the super and it is 100% more work when doing a full brood check and could be twice as hard to find the queen but it’s working for me during our summer dearth.
If I used 10 frame boxes I would not use 2 brood boxes.
