Need some suggestions for transferring from deep to medium

[Oneamateur]

I have a couple of 10 frames deep brood box. Since my back is going bad, I want to change to 8 frames medium brood box. How would I do it? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[BeeMaster2]

Start by putting medium boxes/frames above the deep boxes. As they get filled add more mediums. Next spring there is a good chance the bees have moved up and you can remove deeps. I did this slowly and removed the deeps during spring cleanup or when ever they abandoned the box.
Jim

[iddee]

I am 72, 100% disabled, and run all deep brood boxes. WHY? Because I think they are better for the bees. Others think differently. The big thing is, I never lift a full deep box. A deep box is 11 pieces, in my case, 10 frames and a box. I just remove a number of frames and then move the box.

 If you have a 600 lb.weight lifting set, do you put all the weights on the bar when you work out?

[little john]

I'm with iddee on this one.  I'm 71. Not disabled, but 6'4" - so the back is always 'at risk' when lifting.  Most of my vertical hive brood boxes were 11 frame, 9" deep.  I'm now progressively converting these into 11 frame, 12" deep - same thinking - never lift a boxful, only a frame at a time.  Same logic as when working with my horizontal hives.

I'm also making more half-width nuc boxes each winter - apart from functioning as 5-frame nuc boxes, these can also be used in pairs above a standard brood box if needed.  When carrying these, the centre of gravity of each box is so much nearer to the body that any strain on the back is minimal.  Recommended.
LJ

[Acebird]

It is way easier if all your equipment is in the same box.  Flexibility and interchangeability is the way to go for a hobbyist.  If it is a business then hire a grunt.
I did it the way Jim suggested.  You can do it the opposite way by supering underneath the deep and then pull the frames out when they fill up as capped honey.  It is quicker but requires more work.

[beeman2009]

I did it Jim's way too. It worked very well. I also did it for the same reason Ace said. Uniformity & ease of exchange. Works great for me. Been all 8 frame mediums for 10 years.

[BeeMaster2]

I started out building 4 deep boxes my first year and another 4 deeps my second year. Then I switched to mediums. As
I removed the deeps I put them on my table saw and cut them down to mediums and used the remaining sections to make Screen top boards.
You can also cut the deep frames with plasticell to fit in the mediums.
Jim

[eltalia]

The point LJ makes about "centre of gravity" is an important one for us b'keeps of age - owners of
past lives often spent unwittingly abusing our bodies, either through necessity or largesse.
Important as I have been told not to lift 10kg at any height about naval level as such exertion
strains the heart, severely. Removing the battery from the Toyota 4x4 being a topical example at
that time.
No longer having more than 2 stacked FD colonies of my own I am developing a bullbar
demountable lightweight boomlift utilising the offroad electric winch in place on the Toyota 4x4.
Clients can lift their own boxes, not I.
Anything else I will be working with into the future is LLTBH and Skep, so a max dead weight of
a few kilograms.

Without "stirring the possum" in anyway, I have long believed, and today see quite convincing
evidence, it is the use of mediums that is behind much of the woes my NH brethren face, year in
year out. This format introduces way too much wood into a colony, wood in the flow of work
pathways bees must contend with. Hobbyists following that trend would do well to look at the
TBH format in a Langstroth config. I am hoping my Skep project provides yet another alternative
for the hobbyist.

Bill

[little john]

On the subject of lifting/ CofG and so forth - there's a useful diagram in the following thread.  Might be worth a look ?

https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=47599.msg414515#msg414515

LJ

[yes2matt]

I'm relatively young on this board, but I'm a buck-forty-five-soaking-wet, most of it is hair. :) I switched from 8fr meds to 10fr deeps two years ago, for the main reason that a healthy brood nest in my situation will fill 3 boxes, and then to super on top of that makes the stack 6 or 7 boxes high. It's a lot more work to inspect a hive that way.

My main difficulty, and maybe the answer is in this thread, is when I need to put the hive back together, trying to gently put back the second full deep. It has to be held out parallel and lowered delicately. Very difficult.

I'm raising a couple kids who might be good helpers tho. :)


OH I almost forgot the reason I posted; I've never seen so many beeks agree on something before!

Sent from my SM-J327P using Tapatalk

[Acebird]

a healthy brood nest in my situation will fill 3 boxes, and then to super on top of that makes the stack 6 or 7 boxes high. It's a lot more work to inspect a hive that way.

Most beekeepers do not inspect hives that have 3-4 boxes of honey on them.  It is a good indication that the hive is healthy.

[little john]

My main difficulty, and maybe the answer is in this thread, is when I need to put the hive back together, trying to gently put back the second full deep. It has to be held out parallel and lowered delicately. Very difficult.

If you're committed to this way of working, and if the process should ever become a problem - there are several solutions to be found in the world of the Warre Beehive, where some folk consider it essential to keep the existing stack together whilst nadiring (inserting a fresh box at the bottom).  The sort of gizmos they use are sack trucks converted into mini fork-lifts, where the box is grabbed on the outside, rather than lifted from underneath.  Might be worth checking out if your kids should start asking for a pay rise !
LJ

[eltalia]

My main difficulty, and maybe the answer is in this thread, is when I need to put the hive back
together, trying to gently put back the second full deep. It has to be held out parallel and
lowered delicately. Very difficult.

Hearing you on that one ;-)
As mine own difficulty progresses I have had to try new things, one is
get used to doing more "time" work at doing it "lighter".
So now I use two boxes to shift/reload/replace a whole box, frame at a time.
I am working towards using a folding metal frame stand which still
allows brood protection whilst the frame sits in the open till I regather myself.

Bill

[Acebird]

I am a hobbyist.  Disassembling a hive one frame at a time can be like stepping on a hornet's nest during a dearth.  I only harvest during a dearth.

[eltalia]

I am a hobbyist.  Disassembling a hive one frame at a time can be like stepping on a hornet's nest
during a dearth.  I only harvest during a dearth.

As an Apiarist - flash naming for "beekeeper" - I have any amount of hobbyists
coming under my umbrella all anxious and/or flighty as the apiary is approached.
"I haven't got my veil" -- "Ya wont need that" -- "But my bees sting" -- "I can sell
ya a startup, cheap".

Message being, one of two things are the problem.
Your choice of timing.
Your choice of queen attributes.
"Your" being the hobbyist approach to beekeeping.

Oh... and it has to be said, again. When your choice is to beekeep
your Life choice then is be stung.

Bill

[Acebird]

Yeah, you can be a hard ass beekeeper and enjoy the stings or you could be a smart ass beekeeper and learn how not to get stung.  Take your pick.

[yes2matt]

If you're committed to this way of working, and if the process should ever become a problem - there are several solutions to be found in the world of the Warre Beehive, where some folk consider it essential to keep the existing stack together whilst nadiring (inserting a fresh box at the bottom).  The sort of gizmos they use are sack trucks converted into mini fork-lifts, where the box is grabbed on the outside, rather than lifted from underneath.  Might be worth checking out if your kids should start asking for a pay rise !
LJ

I'm not committed to it really; I still think the idea we bounced around 8ish months ago about tacking together a "deep+medium" ~15 inch frame is worth a go, and I'm waiting the results of your trial. :) To my imagination, one single brood box is ideal. Use a hand cart or helper in the (for me rare) need to move it. Just now I'm limited in my capacity to build equipment at scale and so I keep to what's available commercially.

I have drawn on a napkin somewhere a hand-operated scissor lift for the upper boxes ... I suppose I should upload it to google-photos lest someone make a prototype before me :)

@Acebird I think the logic of booming forage => healthy colony is all wrong. A failing/lost Q, pest infestation, brood disease doesn't show up in the forager population for a month; by then it's long too late for smooth correction.

[eltalia]

Yeah, you can be a hard ass beekeeper and enjoy the stings or you could be a smart ass beekeeper and learn
how not to get stung.  Take your pick.

As sweeping/profound a post as that is it can be said "hard ass" is a beesuit donned bogan/philistine
... seen them at work myself, and those tuned to Yotube can see much more including those using
bee-blowers to clear supers for extraction. Smart bee work is that done with care and least
intervention with antsy bees. All bees will get antsy under the right (?) conditions so be prepared to
wear your mistake.
Again Brian.. use of "your/you" is the royal use as in generic, not a reference to you personally. But
read it as you will.

Bill

[Acebird]

@Acebird I think the logic of booming forage => healthy colony is all wrong. A failing/lost Q, pest infestation, brood disease doesn't show up in the forager population for a month; by then it's long too late for smooth correction.

Measure what the queen is worth ... maybe two, three jars of honey.  Interruption after interruption during a heavy flow will result in more of a loss than two three jars of honey.  A queen is nothing more than a split done 30 days prior.  Do it and sell or give away if you don't need it.  You can fixate your beekeeping life on what could go wrong or you can just reap what normally goes right on its own.

[little john]

I still think the idea we bounced around 8ish months ago about tacking together a "deep+medium" ~15 inch frame is worth a go, and I'm waiting the results of your trial. :) To my imagination, one single brood box is ideal. Use a hand cart or helper in the (for me rare) need to move it.

Oh - right ...

I'm well-chuffed (Brit slang for pleased) to hear that there's at least one person 'out there' taking an interest in some of my meanderings ... :)

If you check out the Brother Adam video in another thread, you'll see that BA favoured the large-frame Dadant system to achieve truly outstanding results.  Now although my 14"x14" test frame size is a tad smaller than the Dadant, I was also to discover (NB. with just the one test colony, in this particular locality, and during a 2 year period) that the larger/deeper frame size did indeed work extremely well.

But - having discovered this, I was then faced with a dilemma (or rather, a trilemma !): whether to adopt this unique 14"x14" quasi-'British National' frame size; stick with the UK industry standard 14"x12"; or move over entirely to Jumbo Langstroths.
Being a 'serious hobbyist' and not a commercial honey-farmer, the most pragmatic course of action was to adopt the 14"x12" format for all my resident working colonies (retaining a small number on the smaller 'Deep National' (standard 14"x9") frames from which to seed nucs for sale), and so cut-down the 14"x14" test frames to the 12" size.

Thus far I've reduced about half of them to this size, and will be tackling the others as and when they're removed from the experimental box.  I took some photographs of a couple of typical combs before butchering them - just in case anyone might be interested:





What you'll notice in both pics is that there are mid-comb 'holes' (exposing the support skewers) at around the 10-11" depth mark.  These holes mark the depth to which comb was drawn-out during the first year.  With hindsight I should have installed a much stronger colony to draw-out such large foundationless combs - but I didn't ...  The remaining few inches were drawn-out the following spring, just as soon as it became warm enough.

I've chosen typical combs, rather than 'the best' - and as you can see, these combs are more than just a little 'untidy', lacking the uniformity usually seen on smaller foundationless frames or (of course) when using foundation.

Conclusion:  On the strength of this one short experiment, can I recommend using such deep frames ?  Well - from the bees' point-of-view, certainly - they appear to thrive on this large comb format.  From a beekeeping point-of-view however, there are logistical issues to be considered - but if these can be accommodated, then the Dadant System could prove ideal.
LJ