Transition from deep brood boxes to medium.

[Charles Wright]

Hey everyone. I want to transition my bees from deep brood boxes to mediums. Does anyone know of any articles or videos on this matter? Or if not, is someone willing to take the time to help me here? Thanks.

[TheHoneyPump]

Pretty simple to do, but it does take time (3 to 4 weeks) to cycle brood and draw new combs.
There are a few pre-requisites that will help the transition go off smoothly. First, you cannot do this without queen excluders. Well, you could but it will go so much easier and trouble free with them. Get some steel ones. Do not use plastic QEs. The hive also has to bee of sufficient size to populate the boxes during the exchange and to be able to build-out and organize themselves into the new boxes without interruption. So, this is best done if the hive population is fully occupying a minimum of 2 deeps in size. Am also going to assume you will be drawing a lot of new medium combs. So this also needs to be pre-planned and done when there is a steady heavy nectar flow on. Or else you have to be prepared and setup to do alot of feeding of syrup to draw new combs. Avoid the feeding scenario, as that seriously complicates what to do with the deeps at the end of the process. So, the planning and preparation criteria that must be met are:  steel queen excluders on hand, hive(s) population is occupying a minimum of 3 deeps, a strong nectar flow period of 3 weeks.
Once those criteria are met, the process involves getting the brood nest started in a medium and waiting for the nest in the deeps to time out while moving the deeps up in the stack. Along the way, manipulating the hive so the bees are drawing combs in a manner that the bees can handle the extra work as seamlessly as possible.
 
Step 1:  Take the hive apart down to the bottom board. Place an empty deep box on the bottom board (no frames in the box). Take all of the brood boxes apart. Find any and every frame that has eggs and/or brood on it, place those frames into that empty box on the board. While doing this, find the queen and move her into that bottom box. Consolidate all the brood in the bottom deep box. Keep the order of the brood frames, which is next to which, the same as you do this. If there is more brood that needs to go into a second deep that is fine. Just get it all as low in the stack as possible. Place a new medium box directly on top of the deep brood box(es). Place a queen excluder on top of the medium and stack above the excluder whatever other boxes there are to the hive, as needed for hive size and flow conditions.
Step 2:  One week later. The queen should be roaming in the medium, spreading her pheromones in it, the bees will have drawn some of the combs, and the queen may have layed a few eggs. There may even be bit of developing larvae. Again, take the hive apart down to the bottom board and reverse the boxes. Place that starter medium on the bottom board. Find the queen and make sure she is in that bottom medium box. Place a queen excluder directly on the medium. Place all remaining boxes above the excluder with brood boxes being the lowest in the stack. Yes, this confines her to just the medium on the bottom. It seems a small space, but there is a reason for doing this, and it is short term.
Step 3:  More than 6 days but absolutely no more than 8 days from the reversal date. Take the hive apart down to the medium box. Remove the queen excluder and check the bottom medium for queen and a stable brood nest being established. Place 2 new mediums on, making the bottom of the hive 3 mediums which the queen has full roaming access to. Put the queen excluder on top of that third medium. Place an empty deep box (no frames at all) on the excluder. Take each frame out of the deeps one by one and shake all the bees off. You may shake the bees into the empty box on the hive or directly out front of the hive entrance, your choice. THOROUGHLY inspect every bee-less deep frame for queen cells and destroy all of them. Put each bee-less deep frame into the empty box on the hive one by one as the qc seek and destroy check is completed. Repeat for all deep boxes and frames, while consolidating all brood frames into that first deep in the stack. Everything else goes above. Close up the hive. 
Step 4:  One week later. Check hive size and honey space. If they need more space, you must under super.  Meaning move the deep(s) up in the stack and place new medium(s) under the deeps, and directly above the queen excluder.
Step 5:  One week later. Any and all brood that was in the deeps has emerged. The deeps are now highest in the stack and are being used by the bees as honey supers. Harvest the deeps, exchanging them for mediums. Extract and bottle the honey. Some pollen is expected to be left in the deeps. This is ok and may be salvageable, depending on what your end plan for the deeps is.
Step 6:  At this point you have extracted empty deeps of drawn comb (that may still have a bit of pollen in them). High value equipment! Drawn comb is worth more than gold, to the beekeeper. Take the frames out of the boxes. Setup your table saw and cut the bottoms of the frames off to get them down to medium size and staple or nail in new bottom bars. Reset the tablesaw, cut the bottoms off of the deep boxes to make them medium box size. Put the cut frames into the cut boxes et voila, you have your repurposed/recycled boxes of drawn comb (med brood chambers) ready for splits etc.

What has happened? In step 1, the nest was started (primed) in a new medium sized box. In step 2, the new box had enough combs started that the queen could continue laying without interruption. She was moved down and confined to concentrate the establishment of the nest in the bottom of the hive. In step 3 the brood nest space was largely expanded, returning to a normal bee-comfort size of 3 mediums (or 2 deeps). When brood is separated from the queen and placed above an excluder, there is high probability that the youngest bees tending that brood above will lose track of the queen and will start cells. Step 3 shuffling of frames and checks takes care of those to ensure hive stability. Steps 4 and 5 are essentially back to normal business of managing the hive while waiting for the old nest brood to mature and emerge out of the deeps. Once the brood in the deeps has cycled, the deeps can be removed and either repurposed, recycled, or disposed.
By pre-planning to satisfy the criteria and following those steps on schedule; the bees` transition into the mediums will be smooth, seamless, and trouble free.  Miss a criteria, miss a step, or miss in timing and you will have some problems.
There may be other thoughts and other methods. The above is what has worked well for seamlessly moving a colony into different equipment when there are brood and resources (honey/pollen). When there is little to no brood present, you could just shake the colony jnto the new equipment and feed feed feed.

Hope that helps!

[Charles Wright]

Ok. Thanks. My two brood boxes aren't full yet. The fall nectar flow will probably be my target. I'll study this post until then. I've got to get better at finding the queen. I think that will be the biggest challenge with this whole thing. Again; thanks for taking your time to answer this.

[FloridaGardener]

This solution may be easier, but you will lose a little growth/production time. And you need a 2nd bottom board & lid.  Also, keep a calendar so you don't forget the timing.  But you should be done in 20 days.

1. Put the medium box you're using on top of your "new" medium.  Make absolutely certain the Queen is inside.  Use  the original bottom board, they will know the smell.  Use a swarm guard, or a queen excluder as "includer" to keep her in the new hive for 5 days.   

2. Take your Deep boxes and set on a new bottom board RIGHT NEXT TO the queenright colony. All flying bees will move back to her within a day or so. 
The nurse bees are cooperative and docile.  Remove all frames without brood, leaving only one stores frame for EACH group of bees.  Probably, you'll have just 1 deep box of nurses/brood. 

3.  Put 1 frame of stores in the 2nd deep box, above an open inner lid of the queeright (QR) hive.  Bees will go above the inner lid to rob the stores. They'll  move stores into the QR brood nest, but they won't build comb above the inner lid while they have space below. 

4.  Put the rest of the stores frames in the freezer for 48 hrs. If it's cooler than 70 degrees out, you can be less vigilant for SHB, and this step will be easier: feed back the stores frames one by one. 
Peek every few days to make sure there's no SHB, and to make sure they have stores to rob out. 
I'd also feed 1:1 syrup in a quart jar in the Queenright colony, to build it out.  Flow or no flow.
The bees can walk around an upturned mason jar inside the feeding box.... to rob out the deep frame of pollen/nectar/beebread.  You don't need to open the brood box, just make sure they're chowing down in the feed box.

6. Manage the nurses/brood so they don't make a new queen.  Make sure they have stores. They are docile and it's easy to peek. Wait until all brood is capped in 10 days. 

7. In 10 days, on the QUEENRIGHT hive, remove the feeding rim.  Put the queen excluder ON TOP of the inner lid.  Add a layer of newspaper.  Stack the old Deep box with nurses & capped brood ON the queenright hive.

8. The nurse bees will move down into the queenright hive. The top space is warmer, and capped brood will need less coverage, the bees know how many need to stay.  As the capped brood emerges, it will move down too.  When the frames are empty, remove the old deep frames, freeze to sanitize, and cut down/give away.


The only reason not to immediately use the inner lid + QX to let the brood mature, is that they don't seem to rob out the stores, and move down.  The QR hive has to understands it has a new space. 

[Michael Bush]

Anytime a frame is empty, pull it and replace it with a medium.  If you can get enough of them out, use a medium box.  You can also put a deep in two medium boxes (hanging down into the lower box).  You can pull frames of honey anytime there is a flow and the frame is capped  Harvest those.  If you can get the queen laying in the mediums, you can put here in the medium with an excluder over it and let the brood emerge from all the deeps.  Once there isn't any brood in it, it can be harvested if capped, or pulled if empty.