Put the honey frames on the side and keep the brood together in the middle in both brood boxes. Considering you will have 8 new frames to draw out, I personally wouldn’t take any Honey frames out till they have filled all the new frames.
Oh, and don’t put your flow super on till they have filled both boxes.
Or just take 1 or 2 honey frames out and after a couple of weeks you could put your flow box onto your 1 brood box.
1 Like
Ok so if I move a couple of the brood frames from the lower box up to the second box and some of the honey from the second box to the outer of the lower box it wont confuse the bees? I am worried about upsetting them!
I think they like new tasks, and space. If there is plenty of honey, you could consider taking a frame too.
The nurse bees will follow the brood frames, no worries there.
Still, make sure 2 brood boxes are recommended where you are. Most of Australia is doing better with one brood box.
1 Like
I have found with flow hives it is better to use 2 medium supers as your brood boxes. This equates to approximately 1.5 Deep boxes - just right!
Hi All, I am a newbie coming into my first spring here in Canberra. I have been advised by a beek in the local association that I should put on a second brood box coming into spring, which I understand is the norm for this area. My question refers to the position of the second box. The beek suggested I put this underneath my current brood box rather than on top as this can prevent early swarming and has worked for them. Any beeks done it this way? Also, the second brood box should contain frames with foundation, but the frames in the first brood box are foundationless. Should I take their advise on the foundation or go with my foundationless frames? Thanks KSJ
Hiya KSJ, Adding a box below the brood box is to nadir the box, to place at the lowest point. Many swear by it and is common practice. Personally I like to use wax foundation in the brood area and have foundationless in the supers for cut comb honey. I find the comb is always built nice and true with foundation which saves hassles down the track.
I got advice from a Canberrian beek who used to frequent this forum which was to use an ideal size instead of a full depth as an extra brood box and move the qx above the ideal in autumn and below in spring, which has worked well for me here in my little piece of paradise on the other side of the country.
Hth.
3 Likes
I have been toying with that exact idea- ‘brood and a half’ I call it. Haven’t done it yet but hope to this season. I have been using ideals alongside flow supers for honey stores- and think it would work well to move the qx above the brood in early spring to give the queen more room to expand into - then move it back down mid autumn so the bees can fill it with honey stores. Controlling swarming in a single brood 8 frame flow hive can be hard- the bees just want that bit more room.
Last few weeks I have been pulling all the winter honey out my brood boxes to make more space- coming spring is looking good with bees having had a great winter. Lots of rain has me hoping for a good start to this season.
2 Likes
Interesting that you say that. I only run single brood boxes and have always found it difficult preventing swarming in my 8 frame hives. Touch wood but at this stage I’ve never had a 10 frame hive swarm (that I’m aware of).
I mentioned this to a beekeeper recently and he didn’t think it was a thing. Thanks for backing me on my theory, I’m not imagining things after all.
I now use my 8 framers as extra large nucs when splitting or catching swarms. Then transfer to 10 framers for production.
2 Likes
Brood boxes of different sizes create a problem with frame management. If one needs to rearrange frames within the hive, move frames between different hives, or replace old frames, different sizes create absolutely unnecessary limitations. If there is a goal to increase a brood box in halves, thirds, or whatever, why not use all boxes of the same size? Say, 3 ideals instead of 1 FD+1 ideal.
Again, even if we will ignore the room required for brood production for a moment, we still need a space required for adult bees. Even if one does not care for creating large colonies (7-11 kg of bees), 4-5 kg is easily achievable with supporting nectar flow. This mass of bees needs room. 1 FD frame provides room for ~0.22 kg of bees. 10 frame flow hive sold as it is consists of 17 frames. 17*0.22=3.74kg of bees. 8 frame flow hive = 3.08 kg. The colony grows above this limit - boom, another post “my bees have swarmed”.
In real life things are not that simple, but those numbers give a reasonable indication.
1 Like
yeah but when you have a flow hive and a single brood- other than adding a full depth super you don’t really have any other options- and two full depth supers are often too much in a poor season/locale. That’s why brood and a half can work with flow hives. If you remove your flow super during winter then the ideal gives the bees enough room and honey stores too.
with standard hives I agree having all the same size frames is a good idea - but mixing things up really isn’t that bad- in fact it’s perfectly OK. My spinner can hold four full depths or 8 ideal frames. I have 26 hives at the moment- I use ideal and full depth supers. I love my ideals. So Light. Perfect for cut comb- perfect for winter stores. One could say: Ideal even… Having two sizes of boxes actually gives me more options. Having multiple hives I don’t really run into issue where I can’t work out where to put a frame I want to move.
For me running only ideal frames with two or three for the brood wouldn’t be a good solution. I like being able to go through a single brood box to find a queen- not three. And in any case I also love full depth frames- for brood- for spinning.
Basically there are more than one way to skin a cat.
3 Likes
Hiya Jack, the idea to move the qx down spring opposed to autumn as you suggest has 2 reasons, there is only one brood box to inspect and it reduces the arc sometimes left at the bottom of the Flow frames by the bees for brood.
Since using the extra box I have not had to feed when others around were which is also a bonus and this was in fact the original purpose for adding the extra box in the first place.
1 Like
Thanks for the advice @skeggley, I just have another question, when the weather is right I would like to add the 2nd brood box (nadir the box), of course depending on how strong the colony is in the first box. Should I put all empty frames with foundation in the 2nd brood box at the bottom or should I put some of the brood frames (checkerboarding, I think is the beek term) from the first box into the bottom? Thanks KSJ
1 Like