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Switching from deep to medium brood boxes

2K views 2 replies 3 participants last post by  Michael Bush 
#1 ·
Due to the fact that I'm not getting any younger and the back surgery I've already had I like Michael Bushs idea to switch to medium boxes. I would like for Michael and anyone else who has done this to let me know what worked best for them. I also have some TBH's in my plans for next year.
 
#2 ·
Carl,
I am in the middle of switching...started earlier this year. So far, so good. What I did was to split my deeps and instead of replacing with deeps, I placed 2 medium supers on top of each remaining deep. Next year I'll probably replace the remaining deeps with mediums by placing them on top after making sure the queen isn't in the deep...with a queen excluder between the mediums and the deep. After any brood in the deep hatches out I can go ahead and remove the deep, replace with another medium and be left then with 3 mediums.
I made my own medium boxes and foundationless frames. It was very satisfying to watch the combs rapidly filling the new mediums.
 
#3 ·
There are many little things you can do. Basically, though, the first concept you need is that it's easy to get bees off of honey, but expensive (in bee ecomony) to get them off of brood. So if you can get the queen into a medium and laying and get the brood to emerge from the deeps then you're a step in the right direction. You are getting late enough in the year you need to keep in mind having enough stores or at least enough comb to store the winter stores.

There are several ways you could get the queen into the medium. Basically you need a queen and some brood comb. You can put some mediums in the deep box. The bees will draw 3" of comb on the bottom of them but you might get the queen laying in them. Then you could cut the excess comb off and move them up to the medium box with the queen and an excluder below her. Another option is just do a cutout. Cut all at least one or two brood combs (or all if you're ambitious) and tie them into medium frames and put them in the medium box.

If you're more patient than that, you can just put a medium box on top and wait for them to finally move up on their own.

But the concept is still that you can remove honey comb but you want to let brood emerge. If you have two deeps can you harvest ten frames? Can you put ten frames of honey on the other side of an excluder so the queen can't use them? The point is to get the deeps where the queen can't lay in them and you can pull them.

Do you have mediums of honey to give them for winter stores? The queen is likely to end up in them in the spring and start laying.

It all depends on how agressively you want to convert.
 
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