I’ve been beekeeping for over ten years and recently was tasked with managing an eight frame (4x2 deeps) observation hive in a winery tasting room. From what I’ve been told bees have come and gone on their own in the six years that the hive has been active. The previous hive absconded in November. I cleaned the hive and filled it with drawn out comb. A medium sized swarm moved in last week and things look promising. The owner asked if it’s possible to put a hive box, either five or ten frames, on the outside of the building and have it connect to the observation hive. My questions are would the queen venture from the observation box to the outside box to lay eggs, or would she just stay inside. And if that’s what she did would the outside box just contain honey and pollen? I have thouroughly researched this topic and have found nothing about it, leading me to wonder if it’s a good idea or not. On the plus side an outside box would make it easier to add bees or replace frames compared to having to move the 100+lb. observation hive outside to do any maintenance. And if it worked it might make the hive more stable since it could be larger than just the eight observation frames.Thanks for any ideas.
Hi Bruce, welcome to the forum. I strongly doubt if the queen would venture too far away from the brood within the observation hive. Even if you put some brood in the outside hive to entice the queen, my guess would be that the bees would build emergency queens on it.
It’s something you can certainly try. A lot of beekeeping knowledge is gained by trial & error.
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