BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > RAPID BEEYARD GROWTH
using 5 frames as a complete hive to collect honey
beepro:
Hi, All!
Main purpose: In a short and sudden honey flow to find a method for faster hive growth while collecting honey using lighter bee boxes in the first season!
With members encouragement and support on this forum, I've decided to share my experience on my little bee box experiment, specifically using 5 frames deep nuc boxes (a complete hive set up) for a rapid hive expansion. For those of you that do not know, Michael Palmer, on his you tube vids talk about using the nuc hives to build up his nuc-yard to support the production yard. You can find lots of infos on the net about the nuc subject. For this particular experiment my hives are stack 5 boxes high, 2 on top for honey collection and 2 in the middle in case they run out of room. Don't want my first year queen to swarm. Never have this issue so far.
The advantage of using deep nucs instead of a 10 frames box is so that the hive can build up faster. Mine are full of bees, see pics below. For one it shape like a tall hollow tree trunk that the bees like. The cavity size already standardized that I'm using ML 5 frames standard nuc boxes for this experiment. You see, in a normal 10 frames hive the 2 outer side frames will be use for pollen and nectar storage. With my method of confining the queen to the bottom nuc box with a QE on top, all 5 frames are full of cap broods. There is not a single cell of either pollen or nectar there. This is a method to force the hive into using all available cells in the bottom nuc box. The effect is more bees and a faster hive growth. <== Key point! So the time to issue foragers and honey collection is shorter compare to a 10 frames deep that take more time to expand. And nucs are forever in an expansion mode. Because our Spring flow is short and sudden, I'm able to collect honey as well as raising more bees for faster splits in its first season using standard deep frames. Forcing the queen to lay all broods in the bottom box will force the bees to keep honey in the top boxes achieving my purpose of having bees and honey at the same time-- 1st season.
When beekeeper has the assumption that you cannot make bees and honey at the same time in the first year I have doubts about that. Then find a method to test out this thinking that is spreading in the bee community. It is a false assumption that I found out! There is nothing wrong with the design of these bee boxes. It has something to do with my set up that change the way they do things in the hive.
It is interesting to see that because all cells are utilized at the bottom for raising broods the bees store their nectar and pollen in the upper boxes. The box above the QE has the most pollen/some nectar stored follow by 3 deep nucs full of nectar in various processing stages. When using the standard 10 frames deep last season (in comparison) with a honey box on top they stored all their pollen and nectar in the bottom box leaving not much room for the queen to lay. She has to use the top 10 frames box for broods with no more room for honey storage. Then I have to add a 3rd deep to compensate for the nectar/honey. I was afraid of this issue repeating this season so did not use any 10 frames box.
Imagine that if you need the brood or pollen/nectar frames you know where to find them. How's that for an efficient splits later on. Imagine how you would manage this hive for mite treatment and disease control (I never have to going tf 4th seasons.) Because of using 5 honey frames per box the amount of time it takes to cap the honey is shorter also in a flow. Less time to fill up the honey cells!
And speaking of split, because of this rapid hive growth, I have utilized this nuc set up to raise some QCs already before the main flow and returning it back to a queen right state while in the main flow right now. It only takes 7 days to make a cap QC. And no need to make a separate CB/CF hive either. The hive is presently queen right and continue to cap their honey after the QCs are removed for splits. Many honey frames are ready to be extracted also but I will wait a little longer. When they are completely cap I will remove them and store for honey processing later on. Then put more drawn frames into the top 2 boxes for more honey gathering. What ever they gather is for them to keep over the summer dearth and I keep the first round of the honey. Now I don't have this issue of stealing honey from the brood frames because there isn't any there. Another issue corrected!
My hives have never swarm. I never have an issue with swarming in my 6 years of beekeeping. Even though the hive population is more as it seems to be, the ratio of young nurse bees to foragers never exceed the level making the hive want to swarm. If your nuc hive swarmed then the ratio of nurse bees and foragers has exceeded their level of balance. In a regular 10 deep box because of larger box volume making the bees issuing more nurse bees than foragers, thereby tipping this scale, they tend to swarm more. When they have reached a critical point where the young nurse bees and foragers are no longer balance, especially during the flow, the hive will be in a reproductive cycle. With this nuc experiment confining the queen to the bottom box the young nurse bees will never exceed the level to issue a reproductive swarm. For one the young bees are utilize efficiently one bee cycle to the next tending to one bee box only with a strong queen's scent in the bottom. Early in the season, I mentioned about using the newly mated dinky queen to head the production hive. Was afraid of her not having a strong queen scent that might cause a supersedure situation, so I put her in this set up to see. No issue with supersedure at all because in a 5 frames box there is no diminishing of her queen scent. Also, the queen's life will be longer because she doesn't need to lay that many eggs compare to a 10 deep box. This way I can evaluate all the queens' performance from hive to hive when it is time for breeder selection.
Thank you for encouraging me to make a post about my findings!
More bees: http://imgbox.com/O1pdLi1q
Equal more honey: http://imgbox.com/5bdEGO3J
beepro:
An update:
It is now hotter into the season. Going to be 95 degree today! Feeling the heat in the early morning already.
The bees from this hive responded by issuing more foragers, maybe to collect more water to cool down the hive. I wonder
how they do it on such a tall hive? Do they go directly into the honey boxes or just cool down the brood nest box? Glad that I
put the queen in the bottom box instead of in the middle box.
At night time I saw a group of bees bearding on the entrance. This may be a sign that this is a healthy hive with more foragers issue.
The honey frames are continuing to be cap now that the white Hubam clovers are blooming along with the privet trees. Stay tune for more updates.
Ben Framed:
You have covered a lot of ground with your experiment , I just read for the first time. You have shared much information, I will need to read again to absorb it all!! This took a lot of time and effort on your part to put together this topic and I thank you for sharing your findings! Keep us updated on your progress please. I have a question. Do you use something to strap the boxes together being the 5 frames are so much narrower that a 8 or 10 frame system leaving a lesser amount of surface base to support the top weight of the top boxes? In other words, with the with narrower boxes stacked 5 high are you concerned about wind blowing them over? We get some pretty heavy winds here in the south at times. Strapping might be something I would have to incorporate in my area. Thanks for sharing..
Sincerely, Phillip Hall
DuaneB:
Interesting concept. Like Ben said, please keep us updated.
So let me see if I got this right. As long as there are more foragers than nurse bees, they shouldn't swarm? Hence the 3 honey boxes to 1 brood box?
Since this is my first year, and I already have (2) 2 deep 10-frame hives going well, I won't mess with them. In the mean time and thru the winter I'll build up a collection of nuc boxes and frames. But I will continue to follow this thread.
Thanks!
cao:
--- Quote from: DuaneB on June 03, 2018, 09:47:52 pm --- In the mean time and thru the winter I'll build up a collection of nuc boxes and frames.
--- End quote ---
I recommend wholeheartedly that every new beekeeper have nuc boxes handy and use them. You can learn a lot playing around with them. IMO they are much more fun to do an inspection with a nuc as opposed to the back breaking removal of full sized boxes.
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