how to expand brood nest HELP

2473 Views 9 Replies 7 Participants Last post by Emanuel Romania, Mar 15, 2014

Emanuel Romania

Discussion Starter · Mar 15, 2014

Have a question for beeks that use beekeeping as a living how do I expand a hive to max proportions for max honey surplus I'm still new at this so any advice will be appreciated I'll mention that I have carnolians and live in Romania in a place that resembles the Missouri climate and flora I have 42 colonies that are in one ten deep hive. Here in Romania nobody has brood in more than one hive body then again. 99% keep bees as a hobby help please and many thanks

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Kenww

· #2 · Mar 15, 2014

Welcome to the forum! I've only had two hives for less than a year so don't have any advice for you. I'm sure someone qualified will help you. How much honey do you average now?

Have you been to Missouri? Romania sounds like an interesting country.

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cata_rebel

· #3 · Mar 15, 2014

Emanuel Romania said:
Have a question for beeks that use beekeeping as a living how do I expand a hive to max proportions for max honey surplus I'm still new at this so any advice will be appreciated I'll mention that I have carnolians and live in Romania in a place that resembles the Missouri climate and flora I have 42 colonies that are in one ten deep hive. Here in Romania nobody has brood in more than one hive body then again. 99% keep bees as a hobby help please and many thanks

daca nu ai cules nu prea ai cum

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jrbbees

· #4 · Mar 15, 2014

I would suggest you go to the front/home page of this web site.
Click on "Point of View"
Read the works of "Walt Wright"

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Emanuel Romania

Discussion Starter · #5 · Mar 15, 2014

Kenww said:
Welcome to the forum! I've only had two hives for less than a year so don't have any advice for you. I'm sure someone qualified will help you. How much honey do you average now?
Honey production would be between 40-60 kg.per hive depending on the year and yes I have been to. Missouri actually I lived 3years in. the bolivar area 20 miles from Springfield

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Kenww

· #6 · Mar 15, 2014

I'm about 70 miles southwest of Bolivar.

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merince

· #7 · Mar 15, 2014

Walt Wright has the checkerboarding, which does not involve re-arranging the brood nest.

Expanding the brood nest has couple of flavors depending on when you do it. If you do it early in the year, when you still have a chance for cold nights, you can put some empty frames right on the edge of the brood nest. The bees will expand into them when they are ready for it.

The most widely used version uses empty frames (no foundation) and works the following. You can start doing it when the bees can fill a space when you take a frame out. Then you take 3 frames of brood out and replace them with empty frames. You put the three frames of brood in the box above. Your bottom box is going to look like that (b is brood frame, e is empty): bbebebebbb. Depending on whether it is still cold, in the second box, you can either put the brood frames all together or space them with couple of empty frames, too. This will entice the queen to lay in both boxes, usually.

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Wolfer

· #8 · Mar 15, 2014

I live about 20 miles from bolivar.

To make lots of surplus honey you need lots of bees. Many here run two deeps for brood. My queens will use most of both boxes in the early spring but will move down as summer comes on.
I don't run queen excluders and let the queen use all the space she wants. Very rarely does she get out of the second deep.
As a general rule a strong hive will gather more surplus honey than two weak ones.
I'm going to try some cut down splits this year. At the start of the flow both hives will have two deeps loaded with brood/ bees. I'll pull the queen and three frames from one and put in a nuc. These will build to a single deep pretty quick. I'll take the boxes of the queen less hive and combine them to the queen right hive. This hive now has four boxes of bees which will gather a lot of honey.
After the flow as bees die off I'll start pulling boxes off after they don't need the room.

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UTvolshype

· #9 · Mar 15, 2014

Emanuel Romania said:
Kenww said:

Welcome to the forum! I've only had two hives for less than a year so don't have any advice for you. I'm sure someone qualified will help you. How much honey do you average now?
Honey production would be between 40-60 kg.per hive depending on the year and yes I have been to. Missouri actually I lived 3years in. the bolivar area 20 miles from Springfield

Click to expand...

I have carnolians in Tennessee which is a little bite warmer in the winter that Romania. I keep them in a deep hive body with a midsize super for their honey storage. I visited Romania in November and got a tour of a commerial beekeeper in Cluj Napoca. He overwintered his hives in singles but stored the supers in a storage compartment with moth controls crystals. During spring when the canolians queens need more room, he would give them the super with a good amount of honey/pollen in the frames. He didn't feed the bees sugar, just giving back the honey in the super. Carnolins need a lot of room when they start egg laying. No brood space and they will swarm very quickly. In the early spring the queen and the first brood will be in the top hive body. In my own hives I wait till they have the top hive body full and I'll switch the bodies and place the empty deep hive body on top and start heavy feeding with 1:1 ratio sugar water mixture. In three weeks I will give them another hive body on top of the deep for the queen to expand if needed. In another two weeks I will switch the bottom and middle hive bodies again to expand the brood area again. So right before the main honey flow gets started the hive will have three hive bodies (one deep and two mediums), in a strong hive brood will be in all three. I don't use queen excluders and let the queen go where every she wants to lay eggs.

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Emanuel Romania

Discussion Starter · #10 · Mar 15, 2014

Thanx guys I'm having a bit of trouble with my fellow beeks here seems there's a lot of secrets nobody will tell to help a newbie so I'm grateful for these type of forums and how early can a brood nest be split with empty frames

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