Question about checking tall hives.

[CovertBeekInColleyville]

I was looking at a great picture of Odfranks hive which has eleven honey supers on it. http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=232494

Say in the spring, you have a hive like this one and it is building up the population really fast and also bringing in & storing large amounts of honey. At what point, do you stop checking the bottom brood boxes for potential swarms and just keep adding supers to be filled with honey? Do you assume everything is OK since the bees are still growing and making honey? Or are you supposed to take all those heavy boxes off and check the brood area on occasion?

[Ravenseye]

Honestly, I would harvest. If you don't, you can watch the entrance carefully. Often, you can tell a lot about the inside of a hive based on what goes on at the front door. And sure, you can pull the supers and check the brood boxes...restacking the supers later but it's a bunch of work. Not many hives get that tall so it's not representative of the average colony.

[bnatural]

I run three deeps on a hive stand and with multiple supers on top, a vent box and telescoping lid, the hives can easily be as tall as me. Not as tall as OF's, but still a pain to tear down. After the spring inspection, when they are only in the deeps, I rarely dig into the main hives, unless I have a good reason. As RE posted, just watching the entrance and assessing the overall mood of the hive when you pull the inner cover can tell you a lot. If you are concerned about swarming, then place a couple of swarm traps near your yard. If you suddenly see a lot of scouts checking them out, then you probably have a hive that is getting ready to swarm (unless they are coming from another yard or from a feral colony). THEN you have a reason to start digging.

Bill

[CovertBeekInColleyville]

Thanks guys. That makes sense.
Another question about a tall hive like the one I mentioned: Does the population of bees go up as you add more supers or is the same population of foraging bees just moving up and filling the empty supers. I figure a shorter hive with one to two supers, the population of the lower brood boxes is spread out some and the entire hive and still looks relatively full. But I am curious what a tall really tall hive with 11 supers looks like on the inside. Is it completely full with bees?

[iwombat]

Once they get that tall they take little electric golf-carts up from the brood box to the top super. So, it's a little crowded in the lower box at night for parking. Installing all the charging equipment for the carts is a pain too. :)

[bnatural]

There's a practical limit on how many bees there can be in a colony with one laying queen. A good queen can lay a lot of eggs a day. I've seen numbers all over the map, but 2,000 is realistic and I have seen as high as 3,000. Non-overwintering bees have a relatively short life-span of 6 - 7 weeks, if they are not eaten, hit a windshield, drown, etc. So, assuming a lifespan of 40 days and a queen laying 3,000 eggs a day, you max out at a little over 70,000 bees before deaths equal births. The number I see most often is 60,000, and I think 50,000 to 60,000 is a pretty strong hive. Of course, this assumes the queen has enough space in which to lay at maximum capacity. So, do the math as to the number of available cells on the available number of frames in the brood chambers, and you can calculate the max.

The point is that, once the colony hits max size, they will just appear to be thinner it a bigger hive with more area, if they are working the supers. But, that also depends on time of day (more in the morning or evening than mid-day), weather (more when rainy), temps (more outside, if too hot), flow (more in the fields if a good flow). So, lots of things can affect the appearance of the density of the bees in a hive.

Bill

[Ravenseye]

More space doesn't exactly equal more bees. Less space will sometimes equate to less bees, as in the "crowding / swarming" scenario.

[beyondthesidewalks]

THEN you have a reason to start digging.

I'm afraid that I disagree but then I have a different view of swarming than most. Once the hive has it in its collective mind to swarm I don't think there's much you can do to stop it. Once the scouts are out I think the hive is all in and going to swarm no matter what action you take. The most common attack seems to be removing queen cells. That just leads to all of the poor folk who start a thread on Beesource about their new queenless or laying worker hive.

I agree that you can learn much from watching the landing board. Once you're in a great honeyflow I think it's in your best interests to leave the hive alone. Let the bees do what they do best -> make you honey. There'll be plenty of time to take apart the hive once the supers are off. Watch the landing board and if you suddenly see a huge drop in comings and goings or some other cause for alarm, by all means open them up and take a look.

[bnatural]

I'm afraid that I disagree but then I have a different view of swarming than most. Once the hive has it in its collective mind to swarm I don't think there's much you can do to stop it. Once the scouts are out I think the hive is all in and going to swarm no matter what action you take. The most common attack seems to be removing queen cells. That just leads to all of the poor folk who start a thread on Beesource about their new queenless or laying worker hive.

I wasn't talking about trying to prevent swarming. I was trying to identify when it might make sense to look around in a hive to see what's going on, as opposed to going in on some kind of schedule, like every week or something like that, especially when there are supers on.

Depending on the time of year, if I DID go into a hive and found swarm cells and obvious signs of an impending swarm, I would pull the queen and a couple of frames of bees and set them up in a nuc or a new box, creating my own controlled swarm, and let the original hive raise a new queen.

UNLESS it was one of my Russian hives. They drove me nuts last year, making queen cells almost non-stop. This year I just set up swarm traps in hopes of catching a swarm, if and when it happened, and let them do their thing. With all this rainy weather, I figured one of them surely would swarm. Nope.

Bill

[kopeck]

I'm afraid that I disagree but then I have a different view of swarming than most. Once the hive has it in its collective mind to swarm I don't think there's much you can do to stop it. Once the scouts are out I think the hive is all in and going to swarm no matter what action you take. The most common attack seems to be removing queen cells. That just leads to all of the poor folk who start a thread on Beesource about their new queenless or laying worker hive.

I agree that you can learn much from watching the landing board. Once you're in a great honeyflow I think it's in your best interests to leave the hive alone. Let the bees do what they do best -> make you honey. There'll be plenty of time to take apart the hive once the supers are off. Watch the landing board and if you suddenly see a huge drop in comings and goings or some other cause for alarm, by all means open them up and take a look.

This is what I find my self doing now. Swarms stink from a honey production stand point, but I figure if I give them space that's the best I can do. Letting them get honey bound is one thing, but if they are just going gang busters and feel the need to split, well that's what swarm traps are for.

I don't find my self digging into the brood boxes on good honey making colonies during the summer. Ones that are straggling, that's another story.

[odfrank]

I never unstack a hive with supers unless I saw it swarm and want the queen cells. I put out over 150 supers this year, unstacking them all full and putting them back full would entail lifting 12 tons. Not for me. If thye swarm they swarm and hopefully fill a bait hive. Who has the time to do swarm control? I have a day job to pay the bills and concentrate on that.

[beyondthesidewalks]

I have a day job to pay the bills and concentrate on that.

I know what you mean. I have to keep my day job to support my bee and livestock habit.

[wcubed]

About population dispersal in a growing height hive: The concentrated bees are in the activity areas. There is little activity in the completed capped honey super, and it's just a ladder for up/down traffic.

In the "main flow" brood nest reducton is in progress, and has been for about three weeks. That means that new bees are generated at a decreasing rate. It's a significant element of the survival format. The accumulated honey stores must be protected from excessive consumption by excessive population. By mid flow the new bees being generated and the brood volume are reduced to the maintenence level of rearing just replacement bees.

I keep referring to a description of the bees survival format in POV, But don't see much evidence that anybody reads it.

Walt Wright

[CovertBeekInColleyville]

I keep referring to a description of the bees survival format in POV, But don't see much evidence that anybody reads it.

Walt Wright

Thanks Walt. I have read many articles in the Point of View section, but haven't come across this one you mentioned. I kinda figured the bees did what they do in the winter except instead of eating their way up, they are filling it up . But I wondered, what if I had a hive that tall and it is full of bees and I accidentally tipped that hive over. :doh: What a disaster that would be.


I never unstack a hive with supers unless I saw it swarm and want the queen cells. I put out over 150 supers this year, unstacking them all full and putting them back full would entail lifting 12 tons. Not for me. If thye swarm they swarm and hopefully fill a bait hive. Who has the time to do swarm control? I have a day job to pay the bills and concentrate on that.
I like your approach and figured most beeks with more than a few hives would not continue to lift those heavy supers on and off every two weeks just to check things out. I appreciate all the advice. I try to work smarter instead of harder and lifting eleven supers (up & down) looks really hard. But I also live in town, so I need to be careful and try to prevent swarming the correct way if at all possible. I am feeding and checking mine once a week. I have learned a lot, but need to watch the entrances more to correlate what is going on inside.

[wcubed]

That comment was not directed to you - just a general impression. I have trouble understanding how beekeepers, no matter what their experience level, can support their bees without knowing the instinctive motivation that drives them. The social insect that is our bee has a very complex set of operations to implement their survival and perpetuation. It is interesting to me that reproduction by colony division is integrated into the overwintered colony early season with controls for protection of survival of the parent.

Articles describing the spring operations are in the vacinity of the "Is it Congestion" article. The editor published that series out of sequence from the order submitted. Fall stuff comes farther down the list.

Re Toppling tall hives: Here in tornado alley, violent weather is a given. Have had several blown over and a few others knocked over by playful calves. Oddly, haven't lost a queen that way. Worst case: One on the front of a trailer dominoed two others. Scattered boxes and major stinging incident. They found a way in at the back of my veil. All that compounded by approaching dark at dusk. You might call that a minor disaster.

Typically, though, the weight of accumulated honey will keep them upright. And I use a heavy cover weight - half an 8 inch block. Have threaded my way through broken limbs in the road to find them standing tall. That's always a great relief.

Walt

[NasalSponge]

I also leave the brood chambers alone once supers go on.