I usually operate two 8 frame deep brood box colony, this allows me sometime for dealing with swarm control about May time. At this time drones are plenty and I have grafted larvae for a colony to rear new queens.
But some colonies are always a head and want to swarm, so as soon as I see a swarm cells I remove the queen. Then I leave one swarm cell in the bottom brood box with few new frames for the bees to draw out, put the queen excluder and super above and then the split board and second brood box above the split board. All the flying bees would move back down leaving the top box with nursing bees.
With this method I rear two queens I choose the one which is the best and keep that one for the honey production. I would move away the other top colony and the flying bees would then join the main hive increasing the forage bees in honey producing colony.
I would definitely need that table to put my smoker on, or something to squash beetles on. That’s one thing I like about flat roofs. You can use them as a mini table. Plus you can sit nucs on them, without creating a new stand. All those gable roofs would do my head in.
That’s a lovely queen on your finger. Plus the photos of the nuc you have for sale is a testament of your success. Well done.
I use the table on the picture as don’t put any of the supers on the ground, I would put the eke I made from decking board on the table and the super on top. This was I can inspect the colony.
I took the queen out to rear new queens for this year, she was re-homed in the club’s apiary. Now I can trace-back a queen to 4-5 generations and have records of what each had done. Only promote the queens with signs of good health, calm temperament and high honey production.
I have got used to the roofs but agree the flat roofs have their advantages.
