# Recombining brood boxes after Snelgrove



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

*Re: Using Snelgrove without splitting*

When the brood upstairs hatches out (and isn't replaced by more brood because of not having a queen) you will have that most valuable of beekeeping assets: fully drawn, but empty comb. The bees upstairs won't have refilled them if they have been steadily moved downstairs.

When you do the recombine you can use that resource to cull any frames that need culling from all three of the boxes. I wouldn't render the culls (unless they are really bad) but freeze and then store them until you have built up more of a reserve supply.

Some of the frames down below may still be undrawn, so that will use up a few, too. If some frames are partially drawn and filled, them you could place them above the inner cover and get that nectar/ half honey moved down during a dearth.

You may not even have to do a newspaper combine when the time comes, just open a pair of doors on both sections and see what they do. (A newspaper combine will be faster.)

Next year, may I suggest something that will be less-hard on your honey crop than what you did this year?

Google up the document "The many uses of a Snelgrove board" by Wally Shaw and follow the "improved" version described in Part 3. It involves putting the queen upstairs (for nine days) leaving just two frames of brood below to begin work on a new queen (plus the field force which will fly itself back to the bottom section). I think it does a better job at keeping the optimal age-class assortments to support a strong foraging force. And I think it more-assertively interrupts the swarm impulse when you are faced with already started queen cells, in whatever stage, from eggs in cups to mostly drawn ones. I have had queens left below simply resume their swarm preps immediately, so you have to keep watching for that even after you've got the SB installed, which is a pain. Leaving the queen below is an effective way to make a split if increase is the main goal of using a SB, but when the bees have already started down the swarm path, a different technique is needed. 

Last weekend I just had to re-subdivide an eight-day old, already-Snelgroved colony that didn't get the message, and one in which I had left the queen below as you did. Luckily, at one week, I made a thorough check on the bottom section rather than just assuming the first division had done the trick. (It hadn't.) But _this_ time, herself is upstairs and downstairs has the flying bees, lots of empty comb, some foundation, the supers and just two frames of bees cooking up some queen cells. I will do the nine-day switcheroo thing and move the queen down and swap the frames up. This has never failed to decisively stop the swarm. (In your case I would give the cells a few more days to develop and then cull them. You have a couple of weeks while the brood above hatches out (and laying workers are suppressed) to leave the SB in place, gradually bleeding a lot of bees down to join the queen and her foraging force. 

The extra drawn comb left over from the Snelgroving this year will help next spring in your anti-swarming efforts, as well.

Enj.


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