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11 frame brood 8 frame supers?

1469 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  Michael Bush
I'm running 11 frame brood with 32mm spacing natural cell no queen excluder. What's your guys opinion about frame spacing in supers in regards to up\down travel of bees and airflow for easier ventilation by bees? How many frames in supers 11,10,9,or 8? I'm not worried about ease of uncapping for extracting. I could add a shim to improve congestion at transition point. I'm not worried about bees building burr comb between transition from 11 frame brood to 9 frame supers. How do bees space honey compared to brood in hallow tree?

[ October 01, 2006, 08:03 PM: Message edited by: betrbekepn ]
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>11,10,9,or 8

11 is too hard to uncap and too skinny for nice comb honey.

10 is good when they aren't drawn comb and when you want comb honey it's the right thickness to fit the boxes.

9 is nice with drawn combs if you want ease of uncapping.

8 is nice with drawn combs if you want ease of uncapping, but it does seem like they move into the 9 frame configuration more quickly.

Bees space most brood comb between 30 and 35mm with most that is all worker at 32mm (1 1/4").

Bees space honey all sorts of widths. I've seen honey comb that was 3" thick. TYPICALLY honey comb is about 38mm (1 1/2") spacing.

Basically the conversion would be something like this:

11 frame = 32mm = 1 1/4"
10 frame = 35mm = 1 3/8"
9 frame = 40mm = 1 9/16"
8 frame = 45mm = 1 13/16"
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I run 11 frame brood and 9 fame super on top then an excluder then 8 or 7 frame drawn frames for honey. I had lots of old 10 bases and boxes so wanted to use them easily.
Question....

Why would you not run a entrance into the hive between the 11 frm/10 frm brood and the 9 frm supers....????

Would this not get rid of the congestion...???
>Why would you not run a entrance into the hive between the 11 frm/10 frm brood and the 9 frm supers....????

I have a top entrance. I don't see any advantage to a middle entrance. I'd have to either use an imirie shim and violate beespace or drill a hole in the box and violate my box.

>Would this not get rid of the congestion...???

I don't think so. Unless you use an excluder, then it might help to have an entrance on both sides of the excluder. In fact, for the drones you HAVE to have one on the brood side of the excluder.
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