This is my first year keeping and I have 1 hive in northern Virginia. I purchased a nuc and the colony is thriving. I’m trying to determine if I should place a second bread box or go to a honey super. My priority is hive health but if I could get some honey this year, huge bonus. Advice is a bit all over the place and Virginia sits right at the border of the north vs southern climates. Thanks for the assistance.
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I guess first question I would have is are the bees running out of room with single brood box?
next do folks in your area use one or two brood boxes?
do you want more bees? ( I started with a single hive and I wish I had two for comparison).
If I were interested in 2 hives, my focus would be that either prioritize 1 really strong hive going not winter this year and maybe split next spring. (There is no guarantee they live thru winter all we can do is give them good chance). Or if f hive or s healthy and want to expand, maybe consider split them start a second hive and hive two chances for a hive to make it thru winter.
Basically I would suggest consider what you want next year and figure out what to do this year. (I’d want to understand how to make increases before figuring out how to harvest honey and hope you leave them enough)
I don’t think there is wrong answer…you just have to decide your priority.
Hi Phil and welcome to the forum. My suggestion is to stick with a single brood box, which I use myself in my sub-tropical climate.
It makes finding the queen much easier with half the frames to look over.
Sometimes the bees don’t use the whole 2 boxes for brood. Sometimes they fill the top box with brood, leaving the bottom box mostly empty. Other times they fill the bottom box with brood, filling the top box with honey. Other times it’ll be a combination of both.
A major consideration is that the bees use a lot of resources filling a second brood box, that could otherwise be used to fill a honey super.
The extra work involved in maintaining a single brood box can be turned into an income, or helping someone else out.
First off thank you. I haven’t been able to find an active community in Northern VA. The one apiary society hasn’t updated their website since COVID so I’m assuming the information isn’t accurate. They have filled out 8 of 10 frames from my 5 frame Nuc in 2 weeks. I decided to try a second brood and see how it goes. Worst off they fill out 10 frames and have a head start for next year. I’m getting ready to go away for a week and the current brood is wall to wall bees so I was worried they may swarm while I was away.
I realize this is a very newby comment but I’m absolutely astonished by how much they do so quickly. The entire ecosystem they create is amazing and I’m bringing my coworkers along for the journey as they are very interested in learning about the bees.
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Hi Phillip and welcome! I’m not such a noob anymore but I’m still astonished by these amazing creatures! You’re asking very good questions and the answers from Grumpy and Jeff will hopefully give you some points to consider. I am in SE PA with weather not too different from yours, a touch colder in winter maybe, and I run single deeps or deep + mediums. So in your shoes I’d check carefully for any signs of swarm prep (packed with bees, lots of drones, older brood ie large larvae and capped cells & few or no eggs, queen cells) before either supering or adding another brood box. Depending on the timing, even adding space in whatever form won’t halt their plans to swarm and you’d need to do a split.
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