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Author Topic: twin brood boxes  (Read 2340 times)

Offline crispy

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twin brood boxes
« on: August 18, 2020, 09:55:32 pm »
Hi all just after some opinions on this subject ,have been watching a guy from new zealand for a while now but he has since retired from you tube but his videos are always a source of knowledge .Recently i watched a video on how he transfers a nuc to a hive which is fairly simple but always good to get a first hand look ,anyway he has a video which is after this one and it refers to adding a second brood box to the hive before adding a honey super his reasoning is one it can stop swarming and also encourages the bees to move up through the hive before adding a queen excluder .

I watched it and had a bit of a think about it and it is probably a good idea as i have heard if you only have one brood box then the chances of overcrowding and swarming increase . He also stated it is probably better for a small backyarder like myself to manage the hive ,thinking about it it rekon it would be an advantage as even if the hive did make new queen cells you could split them of and create a new colony by taking brood frames and some stores of necter /honey ect to start a second hive i am just wondering  if any other people in australia are doing this and what there thoughts are on using two brood boxes rather than just one .

Offline Acebird

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Re: twin brood boxes
« Reply #1 on: August 19, 2020, 09:11:20 am »
A word of caution, bees don't think of their hive as a stack of boxes.  Without intervention they will do what they want with the available space.  The difference between one box or two is beekeeper management not bee management.  You as a beekeeper decide how you want to manage and act according.
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Offline TheHoneyPump

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Re: twin brood boxes
« Reply #2 on: September 12, 2020, 02:32:27 pm »
I second the caution:

Swarming is a complex set of variables. Adding another brood box is not the simple do-all fix. More brood boxes means more brood space, which means more bees, a soon to be bigger hive, which may just result in bigger swarm and multicasting.  I am not in Ozzland, but just as fyi I do run doubles for parts of the season and singles for other parts of the season.  Depends on the goals for that particular hive and the signals the bees and the environment are telling me.

There are two entities involved in swarms.  1-The Queen , 2-The Bees.  The beekeeper has to be aware of each of their seperate needs and attentive to the current conditions in the hive.  So as to look after the separate needs of both of them, at the right time, in order to control the hive and avoid problems.

Bee-"keeper" is exactly that.  Keeping the bees in the boxes.  When a swarm leaves, you are not a beekeeper anymore.  You are demoted to a beehadder, or beehavver if there are enough of them left behind to watch come and go. When you make it through a whole next season without losing any, then you may be promoted to beekeeper again.

« Last Edit: September 12, 2020, 02:42:53 pm by TheHoneyPump »
When the lid goes back on, the bees will spend the next 3 days undoing most of what the beekeeper just did to them.

Offline crispy

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Re: twin brood boxes
« Reply #3 on: September 12, 2020, 09:28:48 pm »
Hi all everything i have read has said that the brood box then queen excluder and then honey super ,the guy wh does this is in new zealand so maybe its a bit different there than in aus ,been thinking about it a fair bit and i might just stick with the standard arrangment ,even a flow hive only has one brood box so i rekon thats the way ill go . All the books ive read only use a single brood box and go into swarm control ect fairly deeply what to look for ie queen cells ,bees actions , and how to react ,ive read a number of books watched heaps of videos over and over and i still know nothing about these little creatures .