Can one queen use two brood boxes?

[Charles Wright]

Someone gave me something to think about. There are about 90, 000 cells in a deep brood box. At top capacity the queen is laying up to 2,000 eggs per day. Multiply that by 21 days that's only 42,000 cells. That's almost 50,000 cells left for honey pollen nectar and so on.  So what would you need a second brood box for?

[TheHoneyPump]

[iddee]

How many frames of honey, pollen, nectar does it take to feed a frame  of brood?

8 3/8" X 16 3/4" (21.59 cm X 42.55 cm) Wired Foundation.
The first "generation" of bees from a typical hive (artificially enlarged bees) usually builds about 5.1 mm cells for worker brood.

I think you need to do math a bit differently. A deep will contain closer to 3200 cells per side, or 6400 per frame.
10 frames, 64,000 cells.
42,000 X 150% = 63,000.

I don't think a hive can raise brood and feed adults, much less store excess, with 2/3 of the hive filled with brood
I would use more then just a single deep.

[AR Beekeeper]

A single 10 frame deep is sufficient for the laying ability of a queen during the time brood is being raised, but all the comb needs to be properly drawn out in worker cells. The side frames will be used for pollen and some honey, and the remaining 8 frames will be used for brood.

Depending on the nectar flows each colony will need 4 to 6 medium supers to store nectar and give living space for adult bees.  The comb will need to be comb from a previous nectar flow because the supers will need to be added very early in the season, usually before the bees will draw out foundation.  Early nectar will be used as it is brought in, but when the flow improves the surplus will go into the first super above the queen excluder.  The bees will move this nectar down to the brood area if it is needed, then it is replaced as the flow increases again.

Single chamber brood nest colonies must be checked regularly for swarming, they often show evidence of swarming sooner than double brood chamber colonies will.  Also, if the queen slows her egg laying the colony often will have frames that become pollen bound.

A single brood chamber colony can overwinter with the food stored in the single box, but it should be packed full with little empty space in October in my location.  It must be checked early in the next spring and the beekeeper must be ready to feed.  I find that leaving a full medium in addition to packing the deep full simplifies the early spring management.

The following spring the queen will be using both the medium and the deep boxes for brood, but when the queen excluder is placed over the deep to confine the queen below the brood above draws the adults from the lower box up.  Once they are working above there is no hesitation in working in the surplus supers.

[TheHoneyPump]

.  Nailed it. 

[JurassicApiary]

[Oldbeavo]

We use single 8 frame deep brood boxes, if the pollen is really going then the bees will store pollen above the excluder.
As a migratory BK we try and keep bees on a honey flow all the time, the main word is try, but this allows us not too have large stores.
Also double brood makes shifting a lot harder if there is a super on as well.

[Michael Bush]

Dzierzon, who I have the utmost faith in, says you can easily prove in the peak of the buildup the queen can lay 3,000 eggs a day.  Some of the brood nest is always pollen and some of it is nectar because the nurse bees need this to feed the brood.  So if two or three frame's worth is full of pollen and nectar that leaves seven or eight frames for brood.  The queen almost never lays up by the entrance on the bottom box.  So that's about another frame's worth.  She almost never lays in the outside frames either and they often go unused.

I give them all eight frame mediums and the queen is often laying in four boxes.

[TheHoneyPump]

I agree with MB description of comb use.
My observations and experience:
- a lazy, poor, old, sick, or cripple queen is content in one deep box.
- any mediocre to half decent queen will easily expand into and use up two deep boxes.
- a good queen, healthy and vigorous, will absolutely demand 3 deep boxes. Or multiple/many splits. 
Bottom line is.  If you give her two boxes and she is not readily using and filling both - pinch her off.  If you constrain her to one box and she is any good at all, you will not have her long as she will leave (swarm) looking for a bigger house.

This is during height of early summer.  Later on as they slow and contract with the season they can be compressed back down into one box.

Imho

[Oldbeavo]

I am intrigued with your explanations of queen capacity requirements.
If you are moving bees then is the honey supers removed and you shift the double brood or are they shifted as triples?
Some groups of bees have been to almonds, cherries and now Salvation Jane, so moving bees is part of our business. These bees shift as single deep brood and a super at 2 hives per pallet.
I am open to suggestions as to how to run more brood capacity.

We do rate queen/bees that use the outside frames to lay in, often they use the inside surface of the outside frame.
I appreciate that pollen stored above the excluder is lost when we take the honey, some hives may get the bonus of some pollen when they get the super of stickies with pollen.

[Oldbeavo]

No comment!
So are double brood boxes the realm of stationary BK's?

[TheHoneyPump]

Imho. 
If you are moving around a lot chasing pollination, you will be doing plenty of splits to manage overall hive size to match the model- ie singles.  Many smaller colonies make easier handling. Hives typically managed in 1 to 2 deep boxes high. 
If you are after large foraging forces to pull in massive amounts of honey in short period, you will not be splitting anywhere as much and focused on building large populations- ie doubles.  Fewer colonies, but massive ones. Hives are typically 5 to 8 deep boxes high.  Honey production hives are moved (migrate) as the flora changes over the season but much less so than pollination. Different purposes, different models, different population and equipment management.

[Oldbeavo]

HP
When you want to shift to another honey flow and you are 5 high, how do you deal with that?
How long do you spend in one spot collecting honey?
I am interested in how you run double brood as most of Oz run single brood boxes as we have followed suit, knowing no different.
Our honey flows only last 4-6 weeks and if you are lucky sometimes another one will follow and you don't have to move.
At present we have bees on Pattersons curse/Salvation jane, next week they will shift 60 miles to blackberries for 4 weeks and then back to near home for River Redgum until the end of January.

[TheHoneyPump]

HP
When you want to shift to another honey flow and you are 5 high, how do you deal with that?
How long do you spend in one spot collecting honey?
I am interested in how you run double brood as most of Oz run single brood boxes as we have followed suit, knowing no different.
Our honey flows only last 4-6 weeks and if you are lucky sometimes another one will follow and you don't have to move.
At present we have bees on Pattersons curse/Salvation jane, next week they will shift 60 miles to blackberries for 4 weeks and then back to near home for River Redgum until the end of January.

Q1:  Pull all the honey, reset the hive at 3 with empty supers, for beespace.  Move the yard within 24 hours.  Restack at new location with empties. (Hives are emptied, reduced, and moved).
Q2: Bloom dependent.  A beeyard not filling and capping 1.5 box per hive per week gets moved to more productive location.
Q3: have to know when (calendar dates) the target bloom/flow is. The production hive population set by preplanning and hive management 6 weeks before the flow. (DB through buildup period, resource levelling, SB for flow, DB post flow and winter). 

[little john]

Charles Wright: At top capacity the queen is laying up to 2,000 eggs per day.

Michael Bush: Dzierzon, who I have the utmost faith in, says you can easily prove in the peak of the buildup the queen can lay 3,000 eggs a day.

In January 1899, Gilbert Doolittle wrote about an experiment he conducted with the Gallup-Adair Long Hive, in which he pulled over a quarter of a ton of extracted honey from one of them by continuously extracting (i.e. extracting every two or three days), indicating that 5000 eggs a day is possible under ideal conditions. He writes:

In the spring of 1874 I read upon the [Adair] Long Idea hive, and became infatuated with the same. I made two of them, working one for extracted honey and the other for comb, these hives being made to hold 32 Gallup frames when the whole number was in.
[...]
Before the basswood harvest arrived, the queen in the long hive, worked for extracted honey, had brood in every one of the 32 combs, to the amount of some 18 or 20 combs full of brood; while the one worked for comb honey, having 32 combs, had brood in only 13 combs, the same amounting to only about 9 frames full, the rest of the combs being partly occupied with honey, which ought to have gone in the sections, and would have gone there had this queen had only the 9 combs for her brood-nest. So the queen from the extracting-hive was laying about 5000 eggs daily, as Dr. Miller says, to where the one in the comb-honey hive was giving only about 2500, each evidently laying to her fullest capacity. What made the difference?

There is something about extracting honey that causes bees to feed a queen in such a way that she will give double the eggs, if she has comb room, that she will when no extracting is done, and thus a queen is coaxed to produce and develop all the embryo eggs she has in her ovaries, in the shortest possible time, while under normal circumstances she will be laying up to her fullest capacity when not producing half the number of eggs she does under the stimulating influences which come from extracting.

LJ

[TheHoneyPump]

During the pre-season build up it is common for me to see 12-14 Langstroth deep frames of brood between the two 10F deep brood boxes. That is actually my baseline expectation of the queens during that time. These are frames 65-80% area filled with tight brood both sides, bounded by arcs of pollen/honey on the frame. During this period I am also moving brood frames around, levelling. When I see more than 14F of brood at a visit I get both excited and suspicious; and usually go looking for the second queen in there.  When I see 10F or less, I boost to 12 and mark the hive for requeening.

I have seen some really prolific queens in my days. I need to push back a bit on the occasional exceptionally high claim we see posted.  In my experience if she is found to be laying out more than 6 big frames of new brood between 7-10 day inspection intervals; in those cases it is often found to be more than one queen in the hive at that time. What am meaning to portray is a top queen whom is well managed and given the space can have up to 18 large frames of brood all stages on the go. Higher than 14 be suspicious, higher than 16 usually means there is more than one.

Summarizing; Yes, any decent queen needs 2 boxes to stretch out and her potential.  If she is happy with less space, she is subpar (to me that is) and needs to get gone.  If she is pushing the lids off at every visit, then she may be exceptional but it is more likely in that case there are two or more) queens laying away in there.

Imho, hope that helps!

[little john]

In January 1899, Gilbert Doolittle wrote about an experiment he conducted with the Gallup-Adair Long Hive, in which he pulled over a quarter of a ton of extracted honey from one of them by continuously extracting (i.e. extracting every two or three days), indicating that 5000 eggs a day is possible under ideal conditions.
LJ

Just to clarify - Doolittle was only curious about what had caused this doubling of the laying rate - he wasn't very impressed about it, just as he wasn't very impressed with the amount of honey that colony had returned.

It took me a while to understand his mind-set, but I got there eventually.  He saw no advantage in having a large brood-nest, except to produce one round of brood about two weeks before the main flow, in order to generate the required number of foragers to take full advantage of it.  At other times an excess number of bees are just so many unproductive mouths to feed.

So - his principle objection to the Gallup-Adair Long-Hive's performance lay in the amount of brood which was generated.  Ideal for bee-farmers (like myself), but undesirable for the honey-farmer.
He thus saw no improvement in efficiency over and above that which he already possessed in the form of what he called his '6-frame' (actually a 15-frame) Gallup Hive, within which the size of the brood-nest could be very easily adjusted - and which was typically run with a 9 frame brood-nest during the season.
LJ