deeps/mediums

[Rooster4473]

origionaly I was going to use two deep hive bodies. But after reading some posts, and considering the weight, I decided to use a deep and I added a medium. Is that going to be enough room for brood, or should I add another medium for brood before I put on the excluder and a super ? I want to make sure they will have enough supplies to be ok thru the winter?

[dickm]

That's a good question. I'm in the same boat. I've solved it by splitting some brood within the hive, by reversing several times and by using brood to make up a new colony. I think that if you stay with them and add space as they need it, they'll tell you what they need. When I found the first super full of brood I checked the deep super. If it were full too, I'd have added more brood space. That never quite happened.
The bottom section always had more room. I'd add another super w/o queen excluder and see what they do. I've rambled enough.

Dickm

[Michael Bush]

Since I run all mediums and no excluder I never worry about it. Sometimes I've seen the queen lay in four boxes. Sometimes she stays in the bottom two. But even when I ran two deeps for brood, I didn't use an excluder. Sometimes the queen would lay a bit in the supers but I figured it was a small price to pay for not having 100,000 bee squeezing through an excluder 100 times a day.

If it helps, three mediums = two deeps.

[Rooster4473]

I like the only medium idea, if I had know I could do that when I started I would never have used the deep in the first place, basically just because of the weight. I really wish I would have found this site earlier.

So, if you don't use an excluder, the queen doesn't lay eggs in the supers? Or if she does lay eggs in the super do you just add another super and let her use the first one as another brood box?

[Michael Bush]

I don't use any chemicals, so I don't need a clearcut definition of what is supers and what is brood nest. But if you want a clearer definition, you can move brood back down into the "brood nest" area if she lays up in the supers. I just let her. If I know I want it to be honey and not brood, I often use 7/11 foudnation from Walter T. Kelly. It's an in between size that the queen doesn't like to lay in so much.

I wish I had known I could use all mediums when I started too. I still have a lot of deeps and shallows around that I only use when I run out of equipment.