How many of you reverse your boxes each year ? By that I mean to put the top box on the bottom . Does this help to keep the brood chamber full ? I have been told the queen doesnt like to move down to the bottom box and start laying in there.
I do it. I do it a cpl times some times, each spring. Depends on the colony and whether I have taken brood and bees out of it.How many of you reverse your boxes each year ? By that I mean to put the top box on the bottom . Does this help to keep the brood chamber full ? I have been told the queen doesnt like to move down to the bottom box and start laying in there.
Actually, if I could draw a picture to illustrate how I was taught to reverse reversing when the brood pattern is shared between two sets of frames is a good idea when done at the right time of year, when brood is not likely to get too cold to survive if it doesn't have enough bees covering it.A caveat: don't reverse your brood boxes if the cluster bridges your boxes. You want to move the entire cluster.
Would you go as far as moving a couple of frames of brood to the center of bottom deep to encourage bees downward and open brood nest with an empty frame on each side of top brood?Stop switching hive bodies.
In my opinion switching hive bodies is counterproductive. It's a lot of work for the beekeeper and it's a lot of work for the bees. After you swap them the bees have to rearrange the brood nest. It's true it will interrupt swarming, but so will other things. Here's what I'd do: Swarm Control
Cleaning the bottom board is standard practice.Beek for dummies states reverse then switch back one month later. Also gives you the opportunity to clean the bottom board which after a long winter is important.
Makes sense to me.
I run 3 mediums over winter and typically in early spring brood is in the the top two boxes and the bottom box is empty. The empty bottom box goes to the top.How does this work for a 3 medium brood nest setup , I assume the bottom will be empty but what about the middle box .