Have 2 questions and hoping I would be able to get some guidance from everyone.
To start off I am currently in the northern suburbs of Melbourne and want to run a single brood box with an ideal super left for them over winter. My current 8 frame is basically all drawn out and ready to drop on the super. The way I want to tackle this is to place the Flow Super on top of the single brood box. If they manage to fill it I then want to add an ideal on top of that which will be left on for them for the winter. Does anyone from Melbourne run in this configuration? Locals I have spoken with have all said I should always be going double brood due to our winter but doing my own research people in much colder climates get away with managing it this way.
The 2nd question is around rotating old frames up into the Flow Super. I received a Nuc at the start of October and I would like to get rid of the old frames. I am currently trying to clean up some chalkbrood and thinking about putting 2 frames up into the middle of the Flow Super and remove 1 of the plastic frames allowing any remaining brood to hatch. Does anyone see issues with me putting a frame up there with a bit of chalkbrood? Its not overly bad or anything but the climate here has not been great with some fluctuations in temperature over the last month. I am cleaning out the tray each day and get between 10-15 on the bottom board a day.
Ideally I want to be rotating a few up there so that I can get a few freshly drawn out frames for next year to deal with potential swarming due to me only running 1 brood box.
I would do it a bit differently. I would add the ideal on top of the brood box first. Put it above the queen excluder if you don’t want the queen to use it. Once it is almost full, I would put the Flow super on top of that. My reasoning is that my first priority is to make sure that the bees get their supplies for winter. That takes precedence over me harvesting honey. Once I know they have sufficient supplies, I am happy to start taking the surplus.
Well, chalkbrood is infectious between bees, but it isn’t a problem for honey or humans. I would prefer not to do that, but it looks like you don’t have much choice. The only other problem is that flow frames occupy more width than standard brood frames, so you will have to watch closely to make sure that they don’t start building out crazy comb in the extra space.
This would also be my preference, although I have not made up the ideal yet or have the frames. I received a dodgy brood box with my Flow Hive which they replaced. Its very misaligned so I am going to cut it down to size and fix up a few of the finger joins
I was thinking about just seeing how it goes. If the ideal doesn’t fill up when the season is coming to an end I was thinking of putting a frame or 2 in the roof and allow them to pull it all down. Obviously Flow frames don’t exactly fit under the gabled roof but nothing I cannot get around. More research here required, worst case scenario I just let them rob them out the front.
That’s ok, I don’t mind if a bit of cross comb comes up that I have to deal with. Part of the learning experience I suppose. Should be able to do fairly consistent inspections up until Christmas but hoping to have most of the issues sorted by then.
My main concern was with chalkbrood being up there with the honey. After thinking about it and reading your post though, if I only had a full Flow super up there I they would be going up there with chalkbrood down the bottom.
