I have landed some out yards and plan to try my hand with about 20 honey producing colonies. So far I have been making bees not honey. I like single box because it is what I have gotten used to.
I have watched all of Ian Stepplers videos and noticed that he adds a second box to his singles then takes a split off them, then proceeds to let them continue to build into that 2nd box until the flow starts and then puts a queen excluder in between those 2 brood chambers after of course making sure the queen is in lower box. Then supers accordingly.
So this means that there is brood above the excluder which will be filled with honey as soon as it emerges. This idea really make sense to me because you can send the colony into the flow as a monster hive and yet have the queen not feeling cramped.
Finally to my question. Is there any reason I couldn't sort the 2 boxes and put say 80 to 90% of the brood (larval and capped) above the excluder and a bunch of empty combs below the excluder in an effort to give her all kinds of space to lay, what is the drawback, labor perhaps?
I have watched all of Ian Stepplers videos and noticed that he adds a second box to his singles then takes a split off them, then proceeds to let them continue to build into that 2nd box until the flow starts and then puts a queen excluder in between those 2 brood chambers after of course making sure the queen is in lower box. Then supers accordingly.
So this means that there is brood above the excluder which will be filled with honey as soon as it emerges. This idea really make sense to me because you can send the colony into the flow as a monster hive and yet have the queen not feeling cramped.
Finally to my question. Is there any reason I couldn't sort the 2 boxes and put say 80 to 90% of the brood (larval and capped) above the excluder and a bunch of empty combs below the excluder in an effort to give her all kinds of space to lay, what is the drawback, labor perhaps?