Why 2 brood boxes??

[blkcloud]

I have always been told that I need 2 brood boxes per hive, and that's what I have..but after having bees for 4-5 years now I have never opened the hives up to find more than one brood box full of brood..and its always the top one, of course..should i rotate the top box to the bottom and let the queen fill it up? At one time i knew how many cells were in a deep brood box, and my calculations at the time were that the queen couldn't keep all of them full at one time..I may be wrong..but I do remember thinking why would I need 2 brood boxes..I live in southern middle Tennessee..thanks!!

[riverrat]

I have always been told that I need 2 brood boxes per hive, and that's what I have..but after having bees for 4-5 years now I have never opened the hives up to find more than one brood box full of brood..and its always the top one, of course..should i rotate the top box to the bottom and let the queen fill it up? At one time i knew how many cells were in a deep brood box, and my calculations at the time were that the queen couldn't keep all of them full at one time..I may be wrong..but I do remember thinking why would I need 2 brood boxes..I live in southern middle Tennessee..thanks!!

The idea for 2 brood boxes is to give them room for stores to get thru winter. I reverse hive bodies in the spring to give them room to move up.

[AstroBee]

This is yet another one of those things that seems to cause much disagreement between beekeepers. Here's my opinion: For my location, and I suspect that your conditions are pretty close to mine, I find that a single deep is all that is needed to overwinter. I started experimenting three years ago and this past winter I used exclusively one deep for all my hives (plus a few nucs too). I started this based upon another local guy you also strongly promotes the single deep approach. I run a QE over a single deep during my main flow and find that swarming is not an issue for me (I generally do cut-down splits to head off swarming). When running 2 deeps, I found that the queen would brood out maybe 9 frames combined between both boxes and fill the remaining with honey (which I generally don't extract).With the single deep the queen will brood out about 8 frames. I've also found that my honey yield with singles is basically the same when running doubles, perhaps a bit better considering the excess honey in the brood box for a double deep. I make sure to give the bees plenty of ventilation and an upper entrance to avoid congestion in the brood area. Running a single deep does limit options for splits, but not a big deal for me. I find that running singles is a better use of equipment and also make finding the queen a lot easier.

Granted, the past few winters have been pretty mild and I'm pretty attentive to all my hives, so when one feels light I have no problem feeding. I'd suggest that you experiment with a couple this next season and see how it works for your area.

[iddee]

Astrobee's reasons for not using 2 are the same as my reasons for using 2.
If brood chamber were to be renamed "bee's home", you would have a better understanding of 2 boxes. One for brood, one for winter stores, or, two boxes for brood and winter stores. Either way, it works out the same. Ten frames for brood and ten frames for winter stores.

Does this clear it up, or make the water muddier? :confused:

[blkcloud]

Its making better sense..so i'm think i'm going to run just one this spring and see how it works.. thanks!!!

[Joseph Clemens]

Since the majority of my full-size hives are in 8-frame, 6-5/8" medium depth supers, I cannot directly relate to what I assume are brood chambers of 9-5/8" depth. But I can share my experiences with 8-frame medium's in my area.

Last year was my first year with 8-frame mediums, though I have been using all medium depth supers (brood and honey) for quite some time, last year (2007) was my first year with 8-frame size. Also, 2007 was completely atypical -- a very poor year for bees. This Fall and Winter I've had to feed sugar syrup for the first time in more than a decade. Anyway, back to the point. Even without excluders, and during the one strong honey flow we did have in 2007, mesquite (April - July), most hives only brooded in two medium supers. However, several colonies expanded their brood nest into much of three supers. There was no obvious increase in honey collection between those using two and those using three supers for their brood nests.

[vajerzy]

I make sure to give the bees plenty of ventilation and an upper entrance to avoid congestion in the brood area.

What do you use for an upper entrance?

[AstroBee]

Either shims with a notch, or simply skew the honey supers to provide a bee-sized gap. Others simply drill holes in their supers. Shims are my preference, but are yet another thing to build or buy.

[vajerzy]

Do you ever have a problem with robbing- since the guard bees are typically at the bottom entrance?

[ScadsOBees]

Even in extreme artic areas like mine(ok, it just seems like it right now!! :( ), they can get through the winter in 1 box. It just takes a little different management technique.

I usually get the bees brooding in both boxes during the spring/summer, I don't think that I would change that. It may vary by area, though.

I'm actually thinking of running 2 queen systems (3 deeps) and then in the summer splitting them back apart so that I can have 6 2-deep hives and 6 1-deep hives to overwinter (stacked with a small hive on top of a big hive) so that I have a little insurance. If a hive dies, I have a strong backup, and if they all survive then I can combine and have booming 2 queen hives. Or help somebody who needs a hive :) .

Rick

[AstroBee]

Do you ever have a problem with robbing- since the guard bees are typically at the bottom entrance?


Guard bees are at the entrances - top and/or bottom. You just need to be reasonable about not giving them too much real estate to manage. I have not seen any problems with robbing using entrances above excluders while maintaining bottom entrances. Besides, robbing during your main flow, which is mainly what we're talking about, should not be a problem for a healthy hive.

[Gene Weitzel]

I did a cutout last fall from under a mobile home between the floor joists. The combs were deep and I had to trim them a little to get them to fit into a deep frame. It required 17 full deep frames to accomodate just the brood I extracted and I trimmed most of the honey from the top of the comb to keep from cutting through the brood. I filled 2 large Coleman coolers with the sealed honey combs. I still have that hive, they overwintered with alot of bees, I checked them two weeks ago and they already had 6-7 frames of sealed brood in the top deep. From this experience, I can say that some queens, given the right conditions, can definately lay fast enough to fill two deeps with brood.

[WVbeekeeper]

Its making better sense..so i'm think i'm going to run just one this spring and see how it works.. thanks!!!

Let me know how many swarms they colony castes with one brood box. Congestion will be a big problem during build up. Overwintering in one deep is easy until the bees start raising brood. A large winter cluster with only one deep hive body in which they overwinter can easily starve during buildup because a frame of brood requires one frame of nectar and one frame of pollen in order to develop into adult bees.

[WVbeekeeper]

It depends on each individual colony's strength as to how much space that you give to them. You can't just say, "I'm going with single deeps." That's like putting a four frame nuc into three deeps with four shallows. It just don't work. Evaluate each of your colonies and adjust their brood area until they are strong enough to add honey supers on to gather a surplus from. Some may take longer than others to build up sufficiently to gather honey from but this is the proper way to do it.

[tecumseh]

may I assume you are also using a queen excluder above the second deep?

if you do the math (i.e. converted the number of frames to square inch and then total number of cells) this would suggest that one box is all that is needed for the brood rearing. this also complies with your observation that all you tend to find in one box full of brood. the second box simply allows an area for the bees to backfill (pollen and nectar) without restricting the queens laying which can be a problem encouraged by the queen excluder itself.

at least one study I recently reviewed in one of the old bee magazine suggested that by placing an entrance above the excluder that the problem of backfilling can be significantly reduced and therefore the second box 'could' be unnecessary. in the same study... a double brood box/ bottom entrance/ queen excluder/ no top entrance hive (I would call this a tradional double brood box hive set up with a bottom entrance only) had signicant issues in that the bees tended to backfill the two bottom boxes to the point where brood rearing was signicantly reduced over the season.