Noob questions - Part I

Beekeeping - Basics
43

Those aren’t my videos:

In my humble opinion, the hives in the video are undersized. I use three brood boxes minimum and most of my hives have gone to unlimited brood nests, allowing the bees to expand as nature intends. For instance, some of my hives wintered with three deeps and 2 mediums for the last couple of years.
Please don’t read too much into this method though; having 50 hives affords me the opportunity to see what works best.

With three deeps, the bees use the bottom box for pollen storage and brood on the center two frames: The middle box is usually wall to wall brood with honey and drones on the outside: The top box is mostly honey with brood in the center.
These hives rear brood all winter long here in the NE USA and allow drones to winter over. They come out of winter much farther ahead of my smaller hives.

One of my hives on February 8th
https://photos.app.goo.gl/nw4yeoqDFyrNo98x1

1 Like
44

Sorry about that I thought that video was of your hives.
I don’t necessarily believe everything I see, especially if it’s on the www. I suspect other issues involved when the bees would go that far up the hive and the queen laying eggs in the flow frames. Queens are usually pretty finicky about where they lay their eggs. I’ve seen many frames where the queen will skip cells just because the wire runs under them.
Rob

45

The maker of the video is a member here so maybe he’ll chime in and offer more insight.

1 Like
46

Hey how far back to you guys set up your hive in angle and pitch? I went to take another frame today and AGAIN a hive soaked in honey. I did the whole cracked only a little then a little more… but in the end it was still all over the hive. I am wondering if I need the hive to be leaning back more?

Thoughts