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Experiment participants wanted

33K views 48 replies 21 participants last post by  MattDavey 
#1 ·
Experiment participants wanted.

If anyone is interested in participating, Walt Wright and I have put together an experiment we would like to have people try.

Checkerboarding vs. Opening the Brood Nest combined with Checkerboarding vs. Neither

Question:
Will bees given empty frames in the brood nest shift to "establishment" mode and make white wax well before the normal time and build up more because of more brood nest expansion and tend to not swarm. Will hives produce more/less/as much as when "Checkerboarded".

BACKGROUND AND TERMS:

CHECKERBOARDING

It would be better if you read Walt’s manuscript, but I’ll give a synopsis of the idea of checkerboarding here. Remember this is an oversimplification.

For a bee colony:

o Survival is the primary motivation
__o Survival of the existing colony takes priority.
____o Bees will not do a reproductive swarm if they perceive it to jeopardize survival of the existing colony.
__o Survival of the species runs a close second.
____o Generation of a reproductive swarm is the secondary objective of every over-wintered colony.
______o The over-wintered colony expands the brood volume during the build-up by consumption of honey.
________o When the colony has expanded the brood nest to the amount of reserve that they consider appropriate, they are now able to move into the swarm preparation phase.
__________o The first activity of swarm preparation is to reduce the brood volume by providing additional stores. As brood emerges, selected cells are filled with nectar or pollen.
__________o Alternating empty drawn combs above the brood nest "fools" the bees into thinking they don't have enough stores yet for swarming and causes them to expand the brood nest, giving both a bigger field force and avoiding reproductive swarming.


To put some of this another way, the colony goes through different goals at different times.

A new swarm starts out with the goal of getting established. They draw a lot of comb and try to expand the brood nest as much as possible to get established and then they go into winter preparation, which is trying to store sufficient stores for the winter. If they accomplish all of this and get over crowded they might cast a swarm to relieve the population problem.

The next year the hive will start out with the goal of reaching a safe position to cast a reproductive swarm. That means the population has to build up enough to afford to lose that many bees and the stores have to be high enough for them to lose that many foragers. Then they go into swarm preparation mode and start backfilling the brood nest. At some point, which Walt calls the Reproductive swarm cut-off, they decide they will or won't swarm.

The goal of Checkboarding is to keep them in the build-up phase until after Reproductive swarm cut-off by making them think they don't have enough stores and giving the brood nest room to expand.

If you look at your bees and your blooms and your climate, this Reproductive cut-off is usually the peak of the apple blossoms or a week after the apples START to bloom. The time to do Checkboarding is 9 weeks before that. That's about when the Elm blooms or four weeks before the Maples bloom or five weeks before the Redbud blooms or eight weeks before the apples start blooming or ten weeks before the black locust starts blooming. Hopefully you have some idea when one of those blooms in your location. NOTE: in theory these are all ways of pinpointing the same stage of vegatative development, they are just different refernce points to figure it out for your location, I'm just listing all the different blooms in case you know when one of them is to calculate from.

At that time (9 weeks before Reproductive cut-off/the peak of the apple blossoms) you checkerboard. You put alternating frames of capped honey and empty drawn comb above the brood nest.

OPENING THE BROOD NEST:

The principles are similar to Checkerboarding except by putting empty frames (not frames with foundation, but frames with either starter strips or comb guides or nothing) in the brood nest, to shift the colony to establishment mode and drawing wax much earlier and prevent backfilling of the brood nest. This causes the brood nest to expand and it controls swarming. To make room for the empty frames you should move frames on the outside of the brood box up to the next box or down or out altogether (depending on if your equipment is all the same size frames) and move the brood combs to the sides and put the empty frames between two frames of brood. To prevent chilling brood, make sure that you have enough bees to quickly fill the gap you've left with festooning bees before you insert the frame. This will ensure there are enough bees to manage the empty space. If there are not enough bees for this, then postpone for another week or two. For the sake of the experiment, it would be good to check the brood nest every couple of weeks and add more frames if the brood nest starts to recede or if there are enough bees to handle the extra space. If you want maximum yields this should probably stop about two weeks before the main flow (about four weeks after apple bloom starts and about the time Black Locust starts to bloom). If the box is brood from one side to the other, three frames of brood can be moved up into the next box to expand the brood nest up and fill in those gaps with alternating empty frames. If you get frames of drone brood (which you most often will for the first couple of frames) move them to the outside edge of the brood nest when you find them and put more empty frames in their place. Anytime you don’t see enough bees to fill the gaps in the brood nest, wait until they have built up more. Some of this timing may vary by race as well as climate, so try to go with the bees.

Walt and I discussed this at length and concluded we think the best time to try this right after the elm bloom or right at the Maple bloom or 2 weeks before the Redbud bloom or two weeks or four weeks before the apple bloom or 6 weeks before the black Locust bloom. NOTE: in theory these are all the same point of seasonal development, I'm just listing all the different blooms in case you know when one of them is to calculate from. I do notice that going by Walt’s chart (in the manuscript) I’m usually about a month behind him. But that seems to be a little more than that in some places. For instance, the Locust bloom here was mid May last year and six weeks before that would be the first of April. Yet at the first of April I’m past the elm and maple blooms. Here, the blooms at the first of April are wild plums and other early fruit trees. You might just look for early fruit trees blooming in your area to key on for opening up the brood nest. Before that there probably isn't any flow coming in to make wax from.

The other up side to Opening the Brood Nest is the production of natural cell sized comb. If you are trying to regress you’ll get this a side benefit.
 
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#2 ·
THE EXPERIMENT:

The idea is to do these side by side and see how the results compare. If you only wish to do one or the other feel free to give your results, but a side-by-side comparison would be more useful. Walt is quite certain of the results of the Checkerboarding compared to the typical brood box reversal system, but if you'd like to compare it to that, both for this experiment and for your own enlightenment, that would also be useful information.

These should be third year or more colonies. First and second year colonies have slightly different timing and goals.

OBSERVATIONS:

If you open the hives every week and use thumbtacks or push pins to mark the top of the brood nest (three pins would work nicely, one in the center and one a couple of frames in from each side). You can log the brood nest expansion by that date by how many inches up it has moved. Also monitor overhead nectar storage. If the brood nest starts contracting before the peak of the apple blossoms then, for Opening the Brood Nest colonies it’s time to add more empty frames. Make sure you have alternating frames over the brood nest of honey and nectar or empty drawn comb. You can do these alternating frames all the way to the top. Once you are two weeks before the main flow (one week after apple’s stop blooming) I would stop trying to get them to expand the brood nest. Once the main flow hits you shouldn’t need to monitor the brood nest anymore, but rather make sure there are plenty of supers on to prevent overcrowding.

So, to recap:

1) Keep notes on when you do what manipulations by date.
2) Keep notes on the size of the brood nest and the amount of expansion or contraction of it by date.
3) Keep notes on when you see white wax.
4) Keep notes on when you see different plants blooming in your area.

Hints:

One way to keep track of some of the blooms, like Maple and Elm is to go to www.pollen.com and see what they say is the prevalent pollen at the time.
 
#5 ·
I would love to do something like this. Mostly to be mentored by you and Walt but I'm afraid my hives are too few in numbers and years to do this. I also plan on doing some major spliting and queen rearing with the hives I do have. Please remember to keep us informed of the results when the come out!
 
#8 ·
If anyone has additional ideas please add them, but here's an idea for a template for a log entry:

Location ________________
Hive name/id ________________
Date _______________
Manipulations performed _________________
Estimate of brood nest size (diameter)______________________
Brood nest expansion/contraction (difference in height from last time to this time based on thumbtacks) __________________
Backfilling of brood nest (Y/N) _____________
Estimate of cluster size (diameter)___________________
White wax (Y/N) _____________
Swarm cells (Y/N) _______________
Currently blooming plants _____________________
Size of cells in newly drawn comb (if there are any) ______________________________ (measure across ten cells with a metric ruler and move the decimal to the left one place)
General observations __________________________________________
 
#10 ·
MANY thanks to Michael for taking charge of this and to all who participate. I am setting up email notification so I can monitor progress for Walt.

BTW Walt is currently traveling to North Carolina to participate in a large workshop. Unfortunately (I hang my head in shame), I neglected to ask Walt where the workshop was, the name, or when he is presenting. I am about to start a new thread called (inspired name ;) 'Walt Wright at North Carolina Workshop' to ask if anyone out there if they have the information. All I know at this time is that there is a large meeting/workshop that takes place over the course of a couple of months.
 
#11 ·
#13 ·
MB,

I've been reading some of the material on checkerboarding and opening the brood area with some interest. I have a few questions.

In the picture of the checkerboard hives with Mr. Wright, it looks as if some caulking was applied to the edge of the metal on the tops. What does that do?

Mr. Wright says to always make sure the broodnest has room to expand, does the broodnest keep expanding into the shallow supers as you add more?

Do you take supers that have filled with honey above the broodnest and use them to create the checkerboarding?

In your system of opening the brood chamber, do you do any special manipulations for the honey supers as I think I am reading in the checkerboard system?

Walid
 
#14 ·
I've been thinking about "checkerboarding" and "opening up the broodnest" with empty frames. I don't have much drawn comb, so I'll mostly be checkerboarding the later. I had planned on taking notes and sending them to Walt, so I'll send them to you too Michael and try and put them in decent format while thinking about what you guys are trying to do. I can't do the side by side comparisons, and I have a few queens comming for splits that I will need to squeeze in too. Any other splits will be done if I see swarm cells developing. And likely a cut down split as the honey flow is gearing up. Hopefully my notes will at least be of some side benifit. Please post any additional info on when/how to add empty frames as they may come to you. I've been following that concept some and will look over walts' manuscript some more before I start working.

Thanks, Michael
 
#15 ·
Following is my protocol for Nectar Management (aka: Checkerboard) based on Walt Wright's publications and input from Michael Bush. This protocol was further modified to incorporate "Opening the Broodnest with Empty Frames" while the hive is being "Checkerboarded".

The initial 2005 blooming dates for trees in my area closely parallels the tree blooming timeline discussed by Michael Bush.

Winged Elm 18 Jan
Maple 3 Mar
Bradford Pear 15 Mar
Redbud 25 Mar
Apple 10 Apr
Black Locust 19 Apr
==============================

Original Nectar Management

The objectives are: prevent swarming; increase early brood development to the equivalent of two and one-half deep hive bodies; and, induce early nectar storage in honey supers continuing through the major nectar flow.

A. Hive Configuration: Configure the hive(s) into one of the following recommended schemes:

1. Medium Super Scheme: Screened bottom board; four medium brood supers; and, top feeder.

2. Deep Hive Body Scheme: Screened bottom board; one medium super; one deep hive body; one medium brood super; and, top feeder.

B. Procedures:

1. Fall (October): Insure the top super, based on the configuration discussed above, is filled with capped honey. Feed 1:1 sugar:water to fill brood nest with liquid feed. Feed 1:1 sugar water until the bees quit consuming it. However, feeding sugar water may not be necessary with an adequate Fall nectar flow.

2. ELM Tree Bloom: When Elm trees start blooming:

a. Add one medium brood super with drawn comb and checkerboard it with the medium super immediately below it. Remove every other nectar/capped honey-filled frame from the lower super and replace them with drawn comb frames from the medium super being placed atop the nectar/capped honey-filled medium brood super. Thus, if frames are numbered from left to right and frame number two is removed from the honey/nectar-filled medium brood super, then it will be exchanged with frame number two (drawn comb) from the medium brood super being added.

b. After performing this checkerboarding manipulation, add a second medium brood super with drawn comb.

c. Anticipate the broodnest expanding upwards into the three medium brood supers above the overwintered broodnest. Therefore, the three medium brood supers immediately above the broodnest should contain dark comb.

d. Periodically, monitor the three medium brood supers for brood expansion and maintain two empty medium honey supers with empty drawn comb above the broodnest and nectar filled supers.

3. REDBUD Tree Bloom: When Redbud trees start blooming:

a. If one or more honey supers were added above the third medium brood super, place an Imirie shim between the third medium brood super and the first honey super. Thereafter, place an Imirie shim between every two medium honey supers which have been added. However, if honey supers were not added above the medium brood supers, add an Imirie shim and add two medium honey supers with drawn comb.

b. If the hive only has two medium honey supers above the three medium brood supers, add another Imirie shim and two more medium honey supers with drawn comb.

c. Monitor the top honey super on a weekly basis and maintain one medium honey super with empty drawn comb on top of the hive.

4. BLACK LOCUST Tree Bloom:

a. After the Black Locust blossoms fades, bees will begin capping honey cells and decrease brood rearing. Anticipate the medium brood supers being back-filled with nectar and capped honey.

b. The colony will supercede the queen if necessary; therefore, do not destroy any supercedure queen cell. If the hive is queen-less, take action to re-queen the hive.

===================

Nectar Management Combined with Opening the Brood Nest

The objectives are: prevent swarming; increase early brood development to the equivalent of two and one-half deep hive bodies; produce early white wax in frames; and, induce early nectar storage in honey supers continuing through the major nectar flow.

Procedures:

1. ELM Tree Bloom: When Elm trees start blooming:

a. Add one medium brood super with drawn comb and checkerboard it with the medium super immediately below it. Remove every other nectar/capped honey-filled frame from the lower super and replace them with drawn comb frames from the medium super being placed atop the nectar/capped honey-filled medium brood super. Thus, if frames are numbered from left to right and frame number two is removed from the honey/nectar-filled medium brood super, then it will be exchanged with frame number two (drawn comb) from the medium brood super being added.

b. After performing this checkerboarding manipulation, add a second medium brood super with drawn comb.

c. Anticipate the broodnest expanding upwards into the three medium brood supers above the overwintered broodnest. Therefore, the three medium brood supers immediately above the broodnest should contain dark comb.

d. Periodically, monitor the three medium brood supers for brood expansion and maintain two empty medium honey supers with empty drawn comb above the broodnest and nectar filled supers.

2. BRADFORD PEAR Tree Bloom: When Bradford Pear trees start blooming:

a. Place empty frames (not frames with foundation, but frames with either a starter strip or comb guide or nothing) in the broodnest, to shift the colony to the establishment mode and drawing wax much earlier. To make room for the empty frames, move the frames on the outside of the brood box up to the next box or down or out altogether (depending on your equipment) and move the brood combs to the sides and place the empty frames between two frames of brood. To prevent chilling brood, make sure there are enough bees to quickly fill the gap(s) with festooning bees before inserting the frame(s).

b. Check the broodnest every week and add one or more frames if there are enough bees to handle the extra space.

c. Discontinue inserting empty frames into the broodnest when Black Locust trees start blooming or earlier.

3. REDBUD Tree Bloom: When Redbud trees start blooming:

a. If one or more honey supers were added above the third medium brood super, place an Imirie shim between the third medium brood super and the first honey super. Thereafter, place an Imirie shim between every two medium honey supers which have been added. However, if honey supers were not added above the medium brood supers, add an Imirie shim and add two medium honey supers with drawn comb.

b. If the hive only has two medium honey supers above the three medium brood supers, add another Imirie shim and two more medium honey supers with drawn comb.

d. Monitor the top honey super on a weekly basis and maintain one medium honey super with empty drawn comb on top of the hive.

4. BLACK LOCUST Tree Bloom:

a. After the Black Locust blossoms fades, bees will begin capping honey cells and decrease brood rearing. Anticipate the medium brood supers being back-filled with nectar and capped honey.

c. The colony will supercede the queen if necessary; therefore, do not destroy any supercedure queen cell. If the hive is queen-less, take action to re-queen the hive.
 
#16 ·
Like others, I'd love to try checkerboarding this spring, but I don't have the drawn comb. I do plan to use empty frames to open the brood nest, Per MB's suggestions.

I'm looking forward to the results as I will definitely be trying checkerboarding in 2007.

-Pete
 
#17 ·
>In the picture of the checkerboard hives with Mr. Wright, it looks as if some caulking was applied to the edge of the metal on the tops. What does that do?

I know nothing about how he builds his tops.

>does the broodnest keep expanding into the shallow supers as you add more?

I don't run shallows at all. I think Walt winters with a shallow on the top and bottom. Since I run all mediums I try to get them to expand as much as they want. I assume Walt is doing something similar with the shallows.

>Do you take supers that have filled with honey above the broodnest and use them to create the checkerboarding?

I believe that's the idea is to put empty drawn combs between the capped ones.

>In your system of opening the brood chamber, do you do any special manipulations for the honey supers as I think I am reading in the checkerboard system?

I haven't. For this experiment I was proposing doing it in both cases so we can analyze the effects of opening the broodnest in addition to checkerboarding.
 
#18 ·
Michael, I was trying to make a rough list of the blooming times you gave but got in over my head... could you do that for us? I had it started as:
Week Zero - elm bloom starts, checkerboard hives
Week Four - Maple bloom starts
Week Five - Red Bud Bloom starts
Week 8 - Apple bloom starts
Week Nine - Peek Apple Bloom, Repro c/o
etc...

I wasn't sure on some nor was I sure where "open broodnest" should fall in the listing. Thanks.

Jim, Thanks for that wonderful list you gave. Very clear.

Waya
 
#21 ·
Jim or Michael,

Would you ever pull full honey supers off while you are maintaining the one empty super? When you are maintaining one empty one, how empty does it need to be?

When the brood nest expands into the 3 medium supers, what happens after the main honey flow? Does it recede back down into the lower brood boxes, or do you do some manipulation to prepare yourself again for the following season?

Thank you for spelling out this very interesting idea. Even though I don't own a single bee yet(would I ever, really?) I would like to structure my arriving nucs to to take advantage of this system next year. I am already going to take MB's advice and use five frame deep and medium nuc setups to get me to natural size cells quickly.

This is great,

Walid
 
#23 ·
#24 ·
>I wasn't sure on some nor was I sure where "open broodnest" should fall in the listing. Thanks.

From my previous post: "Walt and I discussed this at length and concluded we think the best time to try this right after the elm bloom or right at the Maple bloom or 2 weeks before the Redbud bloom or two weeks or four weeks before the apple bloom or 6 weeks before the black Locust bloom. NOTE: in theory these are all the same point of seasonal development, I'm just listing all the different blooms in case you know when one of them is to calculate from. I do notice that going by Walt’s chart (in the manuscript) I’m usually about a month behind him. But that seems to be a little more than that in some places. For instance, the Locust bloom here was mid May last year and six weeks before that would be the first of April. Yet at the first of April I’m past the elm and maple blooms. Here, the blooms at the first of April are wild plums and other early fruit trees. You might just look for early fruit trees blooming in your area to key on for opening up the brood nest. Before that there probably isn't any flow coming in to make wax from."

These are all the same time. I'm just giving references from any bloom Walt had listed to give you, hopefully, a reference that you do know. If all else fails, I'd just go for the first early fruit bloom. Around here that's wild plums and chokecherries, mostly, but there are also a lot of ornemental frut trees in town that bloom around the same time.

>Slightly off-topic but any good ways to tell when elms bloom?

They get little green flowers on them before they get leaves. The flowers are easy to spot because until then the trees are bare. Also a good wind will blow some of them off. Well the wind might blow more here.


> I haven't used a ladder yet to check out the buds, but what do the blooms look like, flowers/catkins etc? I'll continue to check out pollen.com for sure.

I usually go by pollen.com but when you see some green on the elms at all that's the buds of the flowers and they will bloom not too long after that.

>Elm blossoms.
>http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/34289/

I only know the Chinese elms they have around here. The American elms are gone and the rest I haven't seen.

>Jim or Michael, Would you ever pull full honey supers off while you are maintaining the one empty super? When you are maintaining one empty one, how empty does it need to be?

I see no problem pulling honey if you like. I tend to try to extract once and I prefer to let the bees keep the ants and wax moths out until I'm ready to extract.

>When the brood nest expands into the 3 medium supers, what happens after the main honey flow? Does it recede back down into the lower brood boxes, or do you do some manipulation to prepare yourself again for the following season?

I do not manipulate them. I figure they know what they are doing. Often the just stay at the top all winter and keep moving stores up as they need them. Sometimes they spend all winter at the bottom.

>Flowering Elm trees in early Spring have no developed leaves when they bloom.

Exactly.
 
#25 ·
ikkybeer,

I discussed the caulking with Walt tonight. It is one of the deep, dark secrets that enable his whole system to work...

No, seriously. Walt doesn't have a sheet metal break or form to get sharp creases at the edges of the top (notice how they are rounded looking). So the sides tend to flare out. Walt uses a staple gun to tack them down. After a while the staples rust and break, or just work themselves out. So he uses the caulk to help stick the edges down and to 'waterproof' the staples.

Now you know one of his most charished secrets.
;)
 
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