# All Mediums: Was Brother Adam wrong?



## Mike Gillmore

I use all mediums now and my queens seem to cross over frames just fine. Using deeps is no doubt a more efficient set up, as far as the brood goes. But the bees seem to adapt quite well to mediums and do just fine. I've used both, and deeps may provide a slight advantage. But the versatility of using all mediums is worth any minor loss that I may be experiencing, if any. If I were 30 years younger I would probably be using all deeps for brood and supers. But for this 60 year old, mediums are working just fine.


----------



## phopkinsiii

Mike Gillmore said:


> I use all mediums now and my queens seem to cross over frames just fine. Using deeps is no doubt a more efficient set up, as far as the brood goes. But the bees seem to adapt quite well to mediums and do just fine. I've used both, and deeps may provide a slight advantage. But the versatility of using all mediums is worth any minor loss that I may be experiencing, if any. If I were 30 years younger I would probably be using all deeps for brood and supers. But for this 60 year old, mediums are working just fine.


Thanks. My first hive, a beginner's kit, was given to me as a gift. It was one of the best gifts I've ever gotten, but I wish that I'd known about the medium brood chamber option earlier. Even when I was younger, dead-lifting 75-100# of honey and bees over and over again would have gotten old pretty fast.


----------



## Michael Palmer

phopkinsiii said:


> Even when I was younger, dead-lifting 75-100# of honey and bees over and over again would have gotten old pretty fast.


But if you have a deep for brood on the bottom, and all mediums above, why would you be lifting heavy deeps of honey over and over again?


----------



## odfrank

Brother Adam wasn't wrong, his hives do great.


----------



## phopkinsiii

Michael Palmer said:


> But if you have a deep for brood on the bottom, and all mediums above, why would you be lifting heavy deeps of honey over and over again?


You're right, with that configuration, I wouldn't except to clean or change the bottom board. The configuration I have right now is two deeps for the brood chamber. I started and stayed with that because I was emulating the commercial beeks in the area. It took me a while to realize that they have a lot more manpower.
I could probably hang on to the deeps until they wear out, and just use single deeps as I split them, but my ultimate goal is lighter equipment that's completely interchangeable--as long as there's no ill effect on the hive.


----------



## phopkinsiii

odfrank said:


> Brother Adam wasn't wrong, his hives do great.


How much does that puppy weigh? It may be a bit heavy for an old guy like me to lift.


----------



## AR Beekeeper

What Br. Adam said was that the 10 frame Langstroth was not large enough for a good queen's laying abilities. Also, he believed as did Dadant, that a queen having to cross the bee space to a box above slowed her ability to lay a maximum number of eggs.

I agree that a single Langstroth is too small, and a double box brood chamber is not as efficient to work as a single brood chamber, but I have some doubt as to how much a queen's laying is slowed because she must cross up to a box above. On the other hand, I have seen a Jumbo comb that was empty of all food/pollen filled, and I mean filled, with eggs by a queen in 30 hours. That was 9,000 cells, when the book says they only lay 2000 eggs a day. 

I have used the style box that Buckfast Abbey used, I have used the 10 frame Jumbo that uses the same size frame as the Abbey 12 frame box, and I liked both of them. The Jumbo was the most practical because the length and width is the same as Langstroth boxes, so everything except frames fits both styles of boxes. I now use the double Langstroth because I disliked having to make my own frames to fit the larger boxes. 

A 3 box medium has less comb space than a double deep, so it shorts a good queen of laying space. It costs more because of the expense of the extra box and combs. It takes longer to for me to work a colony during an inspection for disease, and a multiple brood chamber, when compared to a single brood chamber, is not as easy for one person to move alone. The 3 or 4 box medium configuration is more awkward to move alone than a double deep. If you have help, then moving any of the colony configurations is no problem. The only thing I see that all mediums has going for it is weight of individual boxes.

Any configuration works when keeping bees just for the fun of it, the configuration does matter when trying to make money from bees.

Mike G., did you say 60? In some circles that would make you just a spring chicken!


----------



## Mike Gillmore

AR Beekeeper said:


> Any configuration works when keeping bees just for the fun of it, the configuration does matter when trying to make money from bees.


That is so true. Sound advice from a commercial beekeeper might be a real challenge and impractical for a hobbyist beekeeper. On the other hand, a great strategy from an experienced backyard beekeeper would be nonsense to a commercial guy. Two completely different worlds. 




AR Beekeeper said:


> Mike G., did you say 60? In some circles that would make you just a spring chicken!


I notice that occasionally at our Association meetings. Sometimes I'm the youngster. 
In other circles I'm the late Fall Chicken.


----------



## Charlie B

Although I use all mediums now, I think bees do better with deep brood boxes. I think they like the extra room. I don't think honey super size matters that much. 

So yeah, I think Brother Adam was right and I believe there is no one alive today that can surpass his bee wisdom. Although there are many "want to be" "bee celebrities" that are trying.


----------



## phopkinsiii

Charlie B said:


> Although I use all mediums now, I think bees do better with deep brood boxes. I think they like the extra room. I don't think honey super size matters that much.
> 
> So yeah, I think Brother Adam was right and I believe there is no one alive today that can surpass his bee wisdom. Although there are many "want to be" "bee celebrities" that are trying.


So, for a hobbyist like me, who isn't trying to make a living from beekeeping, but would like for the hobby to be financially self supporting, will the loss of egg laying cross that specific economic threshold? 
As one who's used both, would you go back to larger brood boxes?


----------



## clyderoad

Charlie B said:


> Although I use all mediums now, I think bees do better with deep brood boxes. I think they like the extra room. I don't think honey super size matters that much.
> 
> So yeah, I think Brother Adam was right and I believe there is no one alive today that can surpass his bee wisdom. Although there are many "want to be" "bee celebrities" that are trying.


How about offering up some personal experiences, instead of all the "I think's" and opinions?

May be that some guys running bees nowadays would surprise many of the old legends with their bee knowledge and productivity.


----------



## Charlie B

phopkinsiii said:


> So, for a hobbyist like me, who isn't trying to make a living from beekeeping, but would like for the hobby to be financially self supporting, will the loss of egg laying cross that specific economic threshold?
> As one who's used both, would you go back to larger brood boxes?


As you can see I'm still holding on to some deeps but that's a necessity if I want to catch swarms with deep traps. But for you and your goals, I would say that mediums would be fine.


----------



## tanksbees

I had an idea to build some frames which are the depth of TWO mediums, so I can use my existing medium boxes and try out some very deep brood frames.

It might be that the medium frames are less efficient, but if you double them you get something closer to a Brother Adams sized frame. So you could theoretically have one standard box size in your apiary but still have very large brood frames.


----------



## Charlie B

tanksbees said:


> I had an idea to build some frames which are the depth of TWO mediums, so I can use my existing medium boxes and try out some very deep brood frames.
> 
> It might be that the medium frames are less efficient, but if you double them you get something closer to a Brother Adams sized frame. So you could theoretically have one standard box size in your apiary but still have very large brood frames.


That's a great idea!:thumbsup:


----------



## odfrank

Charlie B said:


> That's a great idea!:thumbsup:



No, it's not. 
Never build a frame for which you don't have an extractor that will fit it, especially in our area. That was the death knoll for my frames that were two deeps tall. A brood chamber full of honey and no way to clean it out. 
This is a picture of my first "Gargantuan" hive that died. Half the frames solid slabs of honey and no way to get it out without destroying the combs. This year I shut down the last of those frames. Even 11 1/4" frames seem to never end when you pull them out of a brood chamber. If a brood frame is too deep too much honey stays in the brood chamber. In our area we don't need winter stores, so we want the honey pushed up into a honey super where we can harvest it.


----------



## Charlie B

I've never taken honey out of the bottom brood box. They always seem to use it. The only honey I've ever seen in a bottom brood box is in the number 1 and number 10 frame so who cares. If he's just a hobbyist it doesn't matter.


----------



## tanksbees

I never said it was a "good" idea, just an idea.

I will say, those are some impressive looking frames. Around 15 pounds each I would imagine?

Who cares about extracting them, hang them on the wall!


----------



## AHudd

AR Beekeeper said:


> A 3 box medium has less comb space than a double deep, so it shorts a good queen of laying space. It costs more because of the expense of the extra box and combs. It takes longer to for me to work a colony during an inspection for disease, and a multiple brood chamber, when compared to a single brood chamber, is not as easy for one person to move alone. The 3 or 4 box medium configuration is more awkward to move alone than a double deep. If you have help, then moving any of the colony configurations is no problem. The only thing I see that all mediums has going for it is weight of individual boxes.
> 
> Any configuration works when keeping bees just for the fun of it, the configuration does matter when trying to make money from bees.


I had been considering converting to mediums until I found out the price for medium frames and foundation is the same as for deeps. 

Alex


----------



## Sunday Farmer

I use all mediums, on a couple hundred or so nucs and half that many production hives. In the end, you need a lot of boxes. Lots. 
Deeps would be better for brood, for interchangeability, I am glad I have all mediums. Next year I am adding deeps though. 
Just tip the brood chamber back on itself. You don't need to lift the deeps all the time, especially if you are a fixed apiary.


----------



## phopkinsiii

Charlie B said:


> As you can see I'm still holding on to some deeps but that's a necessity if I want to catch swarms with deep traps. But for you and your goals, I would say that mediums would be fine.
> View attachment 20402
> View attachment 20403


Thank you. In the first picture, is that comb they're building outside the box? I've never seen that.


----------



## Mike Gillmore

> I had been considering converting to mediums until I found out the price for medium frames and foundation is the same as for deeps.


The cost of additional equipment when using all mediums is certainly a consideration. But depending upon your situation, there are other cost factors to evaluate beyond the initial investment.

If I have a fixed number of hives and a limited amount of "extra" equipment available, swarm season can be a make or break it time of year. Running all mediums you are able to move honey filled frames up into the supers, empty comb down into the brood nest. They can be moved anywhere in the hive you need them during swarm season to help control swarming. 

If using all mediums can me to keep a hive from swarming, I'll gain "at least" an extra 50# of honey from that colony by keeping it intact through the spring flow. At $5.00/lb that's $250. That will buy a lot of frames and boxes.


----------



## marshmasterpat

tanksbees said:


> Who cares about extracting them, hang them on the wall!


Now that would be an interesting conversation starter. 

- Or arguement starter if the people were beekeepers :no:


----------



## mountainmanbob

Mike Gillmore said:


> If I were 30 years younger I would probably be using all deeps for brood and supers. But for this 60 year old, mediums are working just fine.


I had 100 hives 40 something years ago and at the time thought not much regarding the all deeps that we used.
Now just getting back into bee keeping and doing some 1/2 full honey lifting yesterday, those mediums are looking pretty good.
64 years old here.


----------



## Michael Bush

If you want to cook meat and have it be tender you do one of two things:

1) cook it very hot and very quick
2) cook it very slowly at just simmering temperatures

So which is it? Both.

Why do opposites often have the same results while something in the middle has the opposite result?

In the case of mediums vs deeps vs dadant deeps the argument started between Langstroth and Dadant. Dadant felt that a deep was not enough comb for a queen to lay in and ten frames also were not enough. He also felt that 1 1/2" spacing would prevent swarming by providing more cluster space. Keep in mind that both Dadant and Langstroth were operating on the idea that there would be one box for brood. Dadant was correct on two counts. The queen seemed to be able to fill a Dadant 12 frame box with 11 1/4" frames just fine (11 if you do the 1 1/2" spacing) and not run out of room where in the North, at least, the Langstroth Deep with 10 9 1/4" frames was not quite big enough. So most Northern beekeepers ended up using two Langstroth deeps for the brood box that they would overwinter in while Dadant was using one 12 frame box. With the two Langstroth deeps, the frame is just deep enough that the queen hesitates to move up to the second box. With the Dadant deep she hardly ever moves up to the next box because the combs are deep enough for her. Now you use mediums, she does not hesitate at all to move up a box. So, in my experience, the worst size for a brood box is a deep. The best is either a Dadant deep or a medium. I don't think Brother Adam was wrong. His comparison was mostly British Standard deeps compared to a Dadant deep. He may have also experimented with the Langstroth deep. Of those three, I think the Dadant deep is the best choice, which was his conclusion. I'll bet if he had to manage all the boxes himself he would have preferred eight frame mediums by the time he was 50 or so... but I'm sure he had help. A 12 frame shallow super is very heavy AND very ungainly... I'm sure 12 frame hives are productive in a warm climate like California or a moderate climate like England. Not so much in Nebraska. Eight frames seem to work better here in the bitter cold than ten or twelve.


----------



## AHudd

My advancing age is what got me to thinking about all mediums. I am currently using all deeps for supers and brood chambers. 
What Mike says is true for all mediums or all deeps as well.
When I was young I ran single deep brood chambers and medium supers, because that is what my mentor did, and I believed he knew all that was known about bees.
I am hoping my Grandkids will show an interest in beekeeping, if so they can handle the deeps. If they don't I will have to revisit the idea of all mediums, because I already don't like handling full deeps of honey. I have my hives on an 18' bench so I don't have to bend down to inspect. Two brood chambers and two supers is nearly over my head. I have been taking the full frames out one at a time and putting them in an empty super to harvest. I need wider benches that I can walk on.
Sorry, I didn't intend to turn this thread into a "Beekeeping for Geriatrics" thread.

Thanks,
Alex


----------



## my2cents

2 commercial beeks mentor me, I am truly blessed. Both have two entirely different approaches.
The oldest uses 8 frame deeps on the bottom and mediums on as supers.
Says downfall is requires more time to make splits and manipulate the bees.
The second beek uses all mediums, claims it is easier to make splits but is more costly.

My decision, because I want to use all the same sized boxes and frames, is to move to all 8 frame deeps.
Currently, I am using 8 frame deeps as the brood boxes and mediums on top.
The weight difference of 8 frame deeps and 8 frame mediums is a minimal issue for me. @ 55 with an injured back, I pull mediums off as they become full and place an empty one back in place at the moment and will do this with deeps as I move in that direction.
My2Cents = to each his own, bees do not care what they are housed in, they will do what bees do.


----------



## phopkinsiii

Michael Bush said:


> If you want to cook meat and have it be tender you do one of two things:
> 
> 1) cook it very hot and very quick
> 2) cook it very slowly at just simmering temperatures
> 
> So which is it? Both.
> 
> Why do opposites often have the same results while something in the middle has the opposite result?
> 
> In the case of mediums vs deeps vs dadant deeps the argument started between Langstroth and Dadant. Dadant felt that a deep was not enough comb for a queen to lay in and ten frames also were not enough. He also felt that 1 1/2" spacing would prevent swarming by providing more cluster space. Keep in mind that both Dadant and Langstroth were operating on the idea that there would be one box for brood. Dadant was correct on two counts. The queen seemed to be able to fill a Dadant 12 frame box with 11 1/4" frames just fine (11 if you do the 1 1/2" spacing) and not run out of room where in the North, at least, the Langstroth Deep with 10 9 1/4" frames was not quite big enough. So most Northern beekeepers ended up using two Langstroth deeps for the brood box that they would overwinter in while Dadant was using one 12 frame box. With the two Langstroth deeps, the frame is just deep enough that the queen hesitates to move up to the second box. With the Dadant deep she hardly ever moves up to the next box because the combs are deep enough for her. Now you use mediums, she does not hesitate at all to move up a box. So, in my experience, the worst size for a brood box is a deep. The best is either a Dadant deep or a medium. I don't think Brother Adam was wrong. His comparison was mostly British Standard deeps compared to a Dadant deep. He may have also experimented with the Langstroth deep. Of those three, I think the Dadant deep is the best choice, which was his conclusion. I'll bet if he had to manage all the boxes himself he would have preferred eight frame mediums by the time he was 50 or so... but I'm sure he had help. A 12 frame shallow super is very heavy AND very ungainly... I'm sure 12 frame hives are productive in a warm climate like California or a moderate climate like England. Not so much in Nebraska. Eight frames seem to work better here in the bitter cold than ten or twelve.


MB, I'm glad that you weighed in on this as it was from your presentations that I got the idea of all-medium brood chambers. If I remember correctly from one of your talks, you're using 8-frame mediums to over-winter. Is that still the case?
I live in TN and our winters are mild compared to yours. We still get frequent nights in the teens, but daytime temps usually bounce back above freezing. Winter survival is probably less of an issue for me than for you.
Anyway, I'll pose the question to you: did you notice a significant impact on brood and honey production when you switched to smaller boxes and frames, and was it enough of an impact to be prohibitive to the hobbyist beekeeper just trying to sell enough honey to pay for bees and equipment?


----------



## philip.devos

Interesting discussions about mediums vs. deeps. 

I was going to go to mediums, bought the frames after building some medium boxes. I have changed my mind, as this year I used 7-frame deep boxes plus a half dozen 5-frame deep nucs (I know 7-frames are not standard, but several years ago I sort of locked myself in before I learned that 8-frame is standard). I expanded from 4 colonies to 10 this year by splitting. The flexibility of being able to move only deep frames from box to box convinced me to abandon going to mediums. I am going to sell off my medium frames, as the weight issue of using deeps is acceptable to me (I'm 68).

I'm curious as to the comparative productivity of queens using 10-frame deeps vs. 8-frame deeps brood chambers.


----------



## Charlie B

phopkinsiii said:


> Thank you. In the first picture, is that comb they're building outside the box? I've never seen that.


A swarm moved in underneath one of my strong hives. Apparently swarms like screen bottom boards. I have to remove it like you would a cutout.


----------



## phopkinsiii

philip.devos said:


> Interesting discussions about mediums vs. deeps.
> 
> I was going to go to mediums, bought the frames after building some medium boxes. I have changed my mind, as this year I used 7-frame deep boxes plus a half dozen 5-frame deep nucs (I know 7-frames are not standard, but several years ago I sort of locked myself in before I learned that 8-frame is standard). I expanded from 4 colonies to 10 this year by splitting. The flexibility of being able to move only deep frames from box to box convinced me to abandon going to mediums. I am going to sell off my medium frames, as the weight issue of using deeps is acceptable to me (I'm 68).
> 
> I'm curious as to the comparative productivity of queens using 10-frame deeps vs. 8-frame deeps brood chambers.


Do you use deeps for your honey supers?
Cutting back on the number of frames seems like a reasonable alternative for weight reduction. 
I would also be curious about the productivity. If the main issue is lack of room for laying, it seems that anything that reduces square inches of empty comb would have the same effect.


----------



## tanksbees

The problem with less frames per box is that you have to stack them very high to get the same amount of space, and in addition the boxes are more tippy. So it simply doesn't work. You end up with an unwieldy mess

The 8 frame equipment is already a lot less stable than the 10.


----------



## phopkinsiii

tanksbees said:


> The problem with less frames per box is that you have to stack them very high to get the same amount of space, and in addition the boxes are more tippy. So it simply doesn't work. You end up with an unwieldy mess
> 
> The 8 frame equipment is already a lot less stable than the 10.


Makes sense.
My apiary was originally in my back yard in Florida. Right before I left, hive beetles and wax moths were becoming a big problem. I had one weaker hive that had too few bees to cover all the frames. I took two of the frames out and replaced it with an empty division feeder. (I had stopped using it as a feeder because it was drowning too may bees.) When I last opened the hive, I found several moths and a bunch of adult beetles in the feeder. From what I've seen, any dead space not patrolled by the bees is a great hiding place for pests.


----------



## Acebird

AHudd said:


> If they don't I will have to revisit the idea of all mediums, because I already don't like handling full deeps of honey.


I don't like handling full mediums of honey. I would much rather pull a lever and have all the honey drain into a container and handle the boxes empty. But for the time being mediums work best for me. I know Walt an I don't see eye to eye on the queen crossing mediums but he doesn't use all mediums and I do.

I know if you are lax about maintaining space in the hive the queen will climb 5 medium boxes to lay in the top. The gap that the queen crosses to go from one frame to the other sideways is about the same as the distance to go from a top bar to a bottom bar to find an empty comb.

Brother Adam was one of the top dogs in the monastery so that means he did a lot of pointing and barking orders. There is nothing hobby about what he did or tried to do.


----------



## Mike Gillmore

Acebird said:


> I know if you are lax about maintaining space in the hive the queen will climb 5 medium boxes to lay in the top.


During inspections this spring there were times when I found "eggs" spread up and down across 2 or 3 mediums. With a little bridge comb between the boxes a motivated queen has no problem crossing over. How much time would it take for her to cross to the next frame ... 5-10 seconds? Not much brood loss from that.


----------



## Michael Bush

>The 8 frame equipment is already a lot less stable than the 10.

Let's see... 14" vs 16 1/4". That's 13% difference. Not what I would call a "lot less", but slightly less. I have had no issues but then mine are all touching each other which adds a lot to stability and they are all fairly level, which also adds a lot to stability and on stands low to the ground, which in my windy country adds a LOT to stability. Blowing over had not been a problem unless it was in the open and the stand sunk into the ground a lot on one side leaving it leaning badly in the first place. I've only had the eight frame hives blow over once and that was the case. I've had the ten frame hives blow over more times than I remember, not because they were 10 frame, but because I had them on tall stands back then.


----------



## tanksbees

The 10 frame is 16% larger! And the 8 frame is 13% smaller. Funny how percentages work.

In addition to the 13-16% size difference, the 8 frame will have to be 20% taller vs a 10 frame.

The leverage exerted by the wind on the top box will be much stronger due to the added height.

Since the height to width ratio goes from 1:1 to 1.2:0.86, the wind will have a 39% increase in "toppling power" on the equivalent stack of boxes necessary to house a particular hive.

Not insignificant by any means, and easily observed when you have a stack of boxes. However in practice, the 8 frame boxes seem "good enough". Any narrower and things would start getting shaky. An empty stack of 3 - 5 frame nucs will blow over on a regular basis where I am located.


----------



## philip.devos

phopkinsiii said:


> Do you use deeps for your honey supers?
> Cutting back on the number of frames seems like a reasonable alternative for weight reduction.
> I would also be curious about the productivity. If the main issue is lack of room for laying, it seems that anything that reduces square inches of empty comb would have the same effect.


Yes, I use deep frames & boxes all around. This year I was not interested in honey, but in getting more bees. Using all of the same size allows moving any frame anywhere. I need to become more adept at using a queen excluder, as the one problem I DID have was the queen laying in the fourth box. I didn't think she would go above the third box, but with only 7 frames, she may have run out of space in the lower three boxes.


----------



## texanbelchers

I did a cut down split on my 4 deep 8 frame hive stack. They filled almost everything with pollen, not nector, and wouldn't draw anything new. When the new queen started laying she ran all over and put little patches of eggs anywhere she could from top to bottom.

With that said, my bees are strange. I have yet to see the "normal" pattern of pollen, honey & brood. All of my comb is from cutouts or foundationless and all different sizes. I've been thinking about foundation just for some uniform frames. Maybe if the weather wasn't so oddball they would do what the book says.


----------



## wcubed

te be makes a good point. (inadvertently) The bees instincts are typically ignored in beekeeper choices in management of colonies. You folks that give the queen credit for where and when to lay are in left field. or further out, in the parking lot outside the stadium. The queen lays in cells prepared for eggs by the workers. She has no control over where that is. When the workers are ready to have have those cells provided with eggs, the retinue/court finds her and takes her to that area and encourages her to lay. 
She obediently performs. Take the queen out of the equation - where and when are not her area of responsibility.

Walt


----------



## phopkinsiii

wcubed said:


> te be makes a good point. (inadvertently) The bees instincts are typically ignored in beekeeper choices in management of colonies. You folks that give the queen credit for where and when to lay are in left field. or further out, in the parking lot outside the stadium. The queen lays in cells prepared for eggs by the workers. She has no control over where that is. When the workers are ready to have have those cells provided with eggs, the retinue/court finds her and takes her to that area and encourages her to lay.
> She obediently performs. Take the queen out of the equation - where and when are not her area of responsibility.
> 
> Walt


Which brings us back to the original question. Whether it's the workers or the queen that's responsible, are spaces above the brood chamber that are increased in number by using smaller boxes and frames detrimental to productivity? This concept led Brother Adam to use larger brood chambers than the British Standard. As was pointed out, he had plenty of help lifting these monsters.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the question has impact beyond honey productivity if it's true that the stronger the hive, the higher the survival rate. From everything I've read, that's essentially true, all other things being equal.
Maybe there are too many variables to come up with an exact answer. Like so many things in beekeeping, there seems to be more than one right answer.
I own 4 deep, 10-frame hive boxes with frames that I hate to just throw away even though they're too heavy for me to lift without a back injury when full. What I'll probably do is keep using them until time to replace the comb, then use them to house my hive top jar feeders. As I make splits, I plan to move to all mediums as there doesn't seem to be enough clear reason not to.


----------



## tanksbees

phopkinsiii said:


> This concept led Brother Adam to use larger brood chambers than the British Standard.


In his book "Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey" , he attributes the change to a 12 frame brood chamber because his strain of bees is particularly prolific. He acknowledges that for most races of bees this brood chamber would be too large. He also says that a double deep is too large. He talks about "7 frames of brood" a few times in the book, so I assume the outer 5 frames typically end up with honey and pollen although I don't think he addressed that.

He writes that the biggest loss of productivity is due to swarming, and that he has gone to great lengths to breed bees that swarm infrequently and manage them to prevent swarming. The extra large brood chamber must have been chosen with that in mind.

Just read the book last night, so all of this is fresh in my mind.

I'm not sure where you read "space above the brood chamber has negative effects on queen prolificness", if you can give me a page number I would like to read about that.


----------



## grozzie2

Deeps vs mediums vs {insert size of choice here} is a never ending discussion, that has no right or wrong answer. The answer always boils down to 'it depends'.

Some folks justify a choice based on cost, others make the choice based in weights. Yet other make it based on perceived efficiencies for queens.

If you want lighter boxes so you dont have to lift something that weighs 80+ pounds, then the choice of smaller boxes with smaller frames is rather obvious.

If you are trying to reduce the up front costs, then deeps give more square inches of comb area per dollar spent, again choice becomes obvious.

If you intend to buy or sell nucs, then the choice becomes equally obvious, look around at what's common in your area, and go with that.

We use a double deep stack for a brood nest, then mediums above that for honey storage. There was nothing scientific about this choice, when we started with bees that's what folks told us to do, so that's what we did. As time went on, and I read a lot about different methods, I tried a few experiments. Last year I thought I would save a little and a couple of the hives got deeps for honey supers. When I lifted a deep full of honey off the hive for the first time last fall, I decided on the spot, it was the first and also the last time I would lift a deep full of honey off of a 4 high stack of boxes.

Some of the other options sound interesting, but, they involve using non-standard stuff that I cant just buy from regular bee supply sources. I'm not interested in building non standard stuff, so, those are not viable options in our case.

So for us, we have a significant inventory of deep frames, we will continue to use them for brood boxes. We have a decent inventory of medium frames, so we will continue to use those for honey supers. There is no grey area in our case as to what is a brood box, and what is a honey super, it's clearly defined. A box below the queen excluder is a brood box, and one above the excluder is a honey super. We have had good success wintering in both 10 frame boxes, and 5 frame boxes populated with deep frames, so we will continue to do that because it falls into the category 'its not broken, dont try fix'. We have tried a few hives wintering in deep+medium or multiple medium stacks. The lesson I took from those exercises, they always turned into 'boxes of empty drawn comb we can use for new starts', they did not winter well for us at all.

The part I find most interesting about this discussion over the years, we started out just doing what other beekeepers told us to do, because we didn't know anything. After we had bees, and started reading a lot, we started experimenting with all sorts of different configurations, and figured out what did, and what did not work for us, and most importantly, why it did or did not work. Wind the clock forward a few years, with most of the experiments behind us, we've settled on a configuration we will use moving forward, and it turns out that's the same configuration folks told us to start with.


----------



## jwcarlson

AHudd said:


> Sorry, I didn't intend to turn this thread into a "Beekeeping for Geriatrics" thread.


What size box fits best between the two tennis balls on your walker?


----------



## phopkinsiii

tanksbees said:


> In his book "Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey" , he attributes the change to a 12 frame brood chamber because his strain of bees is particularly prolific. He acknowledges that for most races of bees this brood chamber would be too large. He also says that a double deep is too large. He talks about "7 frames of brood" a few times in the book, so I assume the outer 5 frames typically end up with honey and pollen although I don't think he addressed that.
> 
> He writes that the biggest loss of productivity is due to swarming, and that he has gone to great lengths to breed bees that swarm infrequently and manage them to prevent swarming. The extra large brood chamber must have been chosen with that in mind.
> 
> Just read the book last night, so all of this is fresh in my mind.
> 
> I'm not sure where you read "space above the brood chamber has negative effects on queen prolificness", if you can give me a page number I would like to read about that.


Right you are. I read the section again and couldn't find it. It may have been in Langstroth, but I'm not ready to re-read that again.


----------



## AHudd

jwcarlson said:


> What size box fits best between the two tennis balls on your walker?


They all fit between the tennis balls, it's that first cross bar that's the problem. inch:

Alex


----------



## Ross

3 mediums may be shy of two deeps for laying space, but who says the queen should be limited to 3 mediums? My queens lay as much as they want. When the flow gets going, the bees backfill and push her down.


----------



## sterling

I am just a hobby beekeeper and I use several different configurations just because I wanted to find the perfect one for me. And after just a few years of trying different set ups I have not found that perfect one. For me they all work pretty good. Each has to be managed a little different but all work well. Last year my most productive honey hive was an eight frame medium this year the most productive hive is an eight frame double deep with an all ten frame medium a close second.
After using different types I'm going to say if I was going to do this commercially, and I am not because I would probably starve, I would use double deep brood boxes with medium supers. But for a hobbyist all medium setups are awfully convenient and easy to manage for both honey production and making nucs.


----------



## AR Beekeeper

Tank; I think you may be remembering the average number of MD frames of brood that his hives had after they were equalized, that number was 7 frames.

On page 18 Adam says"Moreover, as experience has amply demonstrated, the space between the two brood chambers tends to act as a barrier to the queen with the result that, though the breeding space is there, the actual area of brood rarely if ever equals that when no such barrier obstructs the movement of queens." That is the statement I think Phopkinsiii may be thinking of.


----------



## Acebird

sterling said:


> I use several different configurations just because I wanted to find the perfect one for me.


There is no such thing as the perfect set up for bees. That is like looking for the perfect woman. They come in all different sizes. Enjoy the one you have or find one you can enjoy. You aren't perfect so don't be looking for perfection.


----------



## phopkinsiii

AR Beekeeper said:


> Tank; I think you may be remembering the average number of MD frames of brood that his hives had after they were equalized, that number was 7 frames.
> 
> On page 18 Adam says"Moreover, as experience has amply demonstrated, the space between the two brood chambers tends to act as a barrier to the queen with the result that, though the breeding space is there, the actual area of brood rarely if ever equals that when no such barrier obstructs the movement of queens." That is the statement I think Phopkinsiii may be thinking of.


Yes. Thank you.
I've also seen or read a couple of places (can't remember where) that the queen won't cross capped honey to lay. I'm assuming this is the reason for the common advice not to break up the brood chamber when adding supers. Does the proportion of capped honey to brood increase on the medium frame because of the smaller surface area?


----------



## Acebird

Capped honey is stored honey. The amount changes with the seasons. Active honey or nectar, the honey they use around the brood nest most likely will not be capped when the colony is expanding during times of nectar flow. Besides this band of honey/ nectar there is a band of pollen on the inside. Shuffling frames around messes up this organization which will cause work for the colony reorganizing it back to a band of honey and pollen just outside the brood.
The queen will cross this band of honey if there is not enough space to lay in the brood nest and you have provided space above. So the brood nest must be of sufficient size that she doesn't need to do that. I would say that a deep and a medium would be close to enough space but two deeps would be better. SHB is the problem with giving a colony more space then they need at any given time.


----------



## Colobee

The deep vs medium debate will likely outlive me, if not all of us. Having run all mediums for 30+ years, and having harvested nearly 300 lbs from one colony, once ( in all mediums), it appears that _that queen & colony_ weren't especially hampered by the break between boxes. Often,when I break apart the brood chamber, I find ladder comb between the frames & boxes. The bees adapt. I've had some queens cross two mediums full of capped honey ( up & out of a 3 medium brood chamber) & fill a 3rd super with brood. The bees do as they please.

Maybe that hive, or all of them, would do better in deeps, but I like the weight & interchangeability of all mediums. Run all deeps, or all mediums, or whatever combo pleases you - the bees will likely be OK with it. Since every queen, and every season is a bit different - the debate will likely never be truly proven one way or the other.


----------



## my2cents

I agree with COLOBEE. I started with all mediums, because that was what was given to me. But, as I begin to grow, I soon realized they were cost prohibitive for me. So, I went with the next 5 hives being a deep bottom and a shallow on top. That worked alright for me. But, I soon had to add another shallow so now I am with a deep and two shallows on those 5. Well, after analyzing cost. I have decided to go with all beeps from this point onward.
Main decision for this was cost, management and dealing with different sizes of boxes, frames and equipment.


----------



## phopkinsiii

my2cents said:


> I agree with COLOBEE. I started with all mediums, because that was what was given to me. But, as I begin to grow, I soon realized they were cost prohibitive for me. So, I went with the next 5 hives being a deep bottom and a shallow on top. That worked alright for me. But, I soon had to add another shallow so now I am with a deep and two shallows on those 5. Well, after analyzing cost. I have decided to go with all beeps from this point onward.
> Main decision for this was cost, management and dealing with different sizes of boxes, frames and equipment.


From this, I would assume that you don't find the lifting issue problematic. Then there's the interchangeability factor unless you use all deeps for your honey supers.


----------



## my2cents

The few pounds difference in the 8 frame configurations I use is insignificant.
I liked the Idea, as both of my Mentors have said, mediums require less manipulation to manage and split, however, it is more costly. The weight difference, as I said is marginal. It is about the weight of an extra frame.
I am using all deeps now, going forward, even for my honey supers.
I have found, the 8 frame supers to be sufficient for brood boxes. Now, I have a friend that has just started into the bee keeping and he has went with the 10 frame deep as a brood chamber and 6 5/8 shallows going up. I am watching closely as to what he's doing. But, he has a slight back problem and has already complained about the weight of the 10 frame supers.
I am currently building and attempting a THB as a hobby and educational hive.
So, Having 3 commercial Beeks as mentors and go to guys for help, and the State Inspector as a friend, I am truly blessed to have these people, I have concluded that each individual must assess what works for them, in every aspect. The oldest commercial Beek said to me once, the Bee is an insect that has no regards to the living quarts it occupies. He pointed to the fact that bees make homes in trees, walls, 4 frame nucs to 12 frame super deeps. He said they do not care if the box is new or old, painted or not. He said they only care to grow, populate, survive, make honey and pollinate as a consequential side effect. 
So, I don't think we know what the bee wants. We do know what we want the we learn what works best for us.
On a side note, as Michael Bush suggests, the bees will move honey if they have space to accommodate the queen to raise brood. That has been my experience. I have seen bees move old honey up into boxes to make room for more brood. I am not saying it is the best, wisest or most common. I am merely stating I have seen this numerous times in different Apiaries.
Being retired at 45, I had to find something to do with my time, so I started a software company and began farming that led me into interest of Bee Keeping, which I had an interest since child hood when my father had 3 hives. So, I am by no means an expert and I believe we will continue to learn from colonies. 
Note, Mason's refer to bee hives as a peaceful existence where all have the same weight but different responsibilities, as each bee is important to the whole of the colony, not one more than the other. Just as it is important for the sun to rise in the east it and sets in the west as it is to the arc of the sun through the sky.
Find what works for you in your Apiary and stick to it.


----------



## phopkinsiii

I've gotten a little further into Brother Adams's book. He does relate some numbers relating to the productivity of the BS hive vs the 12-frame Buckfast hive. One of his neighbors, a commercial beekeeper, used the BS hives for 15 years in nearly identical conditions. Adams reports a 50% difference in honey production compared to the BS set up.
If this is average, or even close to it, I personally would adjust to the larger brood chamber. For example, I might hire somebody to help me for those one or two times per year when it might become necessary or advantageous to lift the brood chambers. Or, I might find some way to lift the boxes by myself without breaking my back-e.g. a hand operated winch and crane.
If this difference in productivity is reproducible, it does make me wonder why the 12-frame 19 7/8 square boxes are no longer commercially available. At least I haven't been able to find them.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

phopkinsiii said:


> wonder why the 12-frame 19 7/8 square boxes are no longer commercially available.


Those hives are hyped in Germany and well in use all over Europe. For a good reason. 

The box itself doesn't bring the honey, it still is the bee. So a small, weak colony doesn't do much honey. But if you put a prolific queen and colony into such a hive, it outperforms other hives. 

At least it makes you better recognize the queen's abilities, since the big combs picturize better what the queen can do. Over the time this will enhance your selection and thus your bee stock. It is really worth to select for better bees, since it'll pay out most.


----------



## beestudent

(not to start another huge descussion, BUT,) BernhardHuevel, is this as saying that 10 frame hives do better than 8 frame hives because there is more space in each box for the queen to lay?


----------



## odfrank

beestudent said:


> (not to start another huge descussion, BUT,) BernhardHuevel, is this as saying that 10 frame hives do better than 8 frame hives because there is more space in each box for the queen to lay?


The 11 1/4" deep frames have more to do with the hive doing better than the count of frames. There is more space in the FRAMES for the queen to lay in. 
Jumbo frame of brood:


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

The total volume of a 12 frame Dadant hive is less than in a hive with two broodchambers. So basicly it is not the total size nor the overall comb space, that makes the difference. 

Some calculations. 

A *Dadant* brood frame (as is used here in Germany, called US Dadant modified) has an inner space of 44.8 cm x 25.6 cm = 1,146,88 cm² per comb side. 
By two is = 2,293,76 cm² per comb.
By twelve combs that is a total space of 27,525.12 cm².
You count roughly four cells per cm², which makes round about *110,100 cells per Dadant* brood chamber. 

A *Langstroth* (oh yeah...is there such a thing as "the Langstroth": http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/lang.html) has 44.8 cm x 20.3 cm = 909.44 cm² per comb side.
By two is = 1,818.88 cm² per comb.
Eight frame Langstroth, two brood chambers = 29,102.08 cm² or 116,408 brood cells per hive.
Ten frame Langstroth, two brood chambers = 36,377.60 cm² or *145,510 brood cells per Langstroth* hive.

As one can see, the Dadant hive has a much smaller brood chamber, in volume and in brood cells although the combs itself are bigger. 

The secret lies in the restriction of the queen to a number of cells, that fits her ability to lay eggs. Brother Adam is writing about seven combs here and there, and what his modern descendants use is a follower board to do just that: restrict the broodnest. In early early Spring that is.

What the restriction does is, to prevent excessive nectar and pollen buildup in early spring. Which will and does disturb the laying pattern of the queen. Basicly the queen is laying eggs in circles and spirals, throughout the hive. With a compact broodnest the hive will flourish and be very satisfied - to such a content, that the bees do swarm much later if at all. 

In hives with a lot of emtpy cells in the broodnest in Spring, the bees will fill those empty cells with nectar and pollen, basicly clogging it. The broodnest starts to split up and distribute. There is one strategy, like Tim Ives does, to simply add more and more cells to the hive, so the queen is able to lay eggs even with a lot of nectar and pollen coming in. A similiar strategy is like Walt Wright does: checkerboarding the hive and thus providing more emtpy cells. The disadvantage of this is, you need a lot of boxes to do this. This is very costly and it takes a lot of box stacking and unstacking again.

In a Dadant hive, you restrict the overall number of cells in early Spring, so the queen is faster laying eggs into the cells provided as the foragers bring in pollen, which restricts excessive pollen in the Spring brood nest. The broodnest shape is roundish and in a ball shape all the time, never breaks up, never distributes. Very compacted broodnest. Those hives are boomers. Very satisfied bees, because the strong smelling broodnest makes the bees happy.

So first comes the pollen management. After that comes the nectar management. This you do with supering more and more supers, very well ahead of time. All the nectar goes straight up into the supers. 

As is with young bees: by restricting the broodnest, you push all those young bees up into the supers. The third thing is bee management. You do not want bees crowding in the broodnest, which needs a lot of fresh air for the brood to raise. Clogged with bees, bees will become unsatisfied very soon and the heat, the moisture of the air in such a packed hive will soon make the bees want to go: swarm.

So you have 5-7 frames of brood in the Dadant hive, closed up with a follower board. Behind the follower board, you have no frames - which creates an empty space behind that follower. This empty space is a very important feature. In this space the foragers will cluster at night. And not under or inside the broodnest! Foragers are old bees and old bees are nasty. They don't treat the queen nicely, in fact they seem to bully the queen all the time. In a hive where the foragers can cluster outside the broodnest - like behind the follower or as an alternative: in a deep floor - the queen has much more comfort. 

Also the bees seem to use the empty space behind the follower board as a highway right into the supers. Leaving the nectar outside the broodnest, which reduces humidity in the broodnest and thus reduces climate stress inside the hive, which in turn reduces swarm intentions. Massively.

So in early Spring, here that is February/March, you restrict the broodnest with a follower board to the number of combs that has brood in it at that time. At that time you can see the queen's and the colony's ability to raise brood. If you find five frames of brood in February, that's the size that colony can manage right until May. If you find seven frames, that's the size the bees can manage. 

Of course you can do this in other hives, too. In a Warré or other eight frame hive, your broodnest is restricted automatically. In fact: the comb space of an eight frame Warré is exactly the same as seven frames Dadant. 

Additionally you only need to provide a deep floor to provide the empty space as in the Dadant. For extra ventilation, I flip open the small metal caps on the entrances on each brood box. That's a workaround to achieve what the Dadant has build in in the design.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

Find this very enlightening:

*Dadant System of Beekeeping*
C. P. Dadant => Son of Charles Dadant 
http://www.three-peaks.net/PDF/Dadant System of Beekeeping 1920.pdf

That is the book as a PDF-file.

Combine it with what Brother Adam said.


----------



## Acebird

BernhardHeuvel said:


> In a Dadant hive, you restrict the overall number of cells in early Spring, so the queen is faster laying eggs into the cells provided as the foragers bring in pollen, which restricts excessive pollen in the Spring brood nest. The broodnest shape is roundish and in a ball shape all the time, never breaks up, never distributes. Very compacted broodnest. Those hives are boomers. Very satisfied bees, because the strong smelling broodnest makes the bees happy.


In a natural hive the queen is not restricted and the hive is not disturbed by a beekeeper. I think that makes them happy.

If you manipulate the brood nest varying the size with a follower board you are not only adding work for a beekeeper you are disturbing the bees. I can't say this doesn't produce more honey for the beekeeper but I can say is it not what the bees prefer. Any screw up on the beekeepers timing of these adjustments could make a huge impact on the honey harvest. I think it will take a lot of experience at each location for the beekeeper to get it right. All the great beekeepers wrote books based on their experience for the most part raising bees at one specific location. I think the single biggest thing that these scholars found was that the ability to vary the size of a hive at will improved beekeeping output and success. Determining the perfect size only made marginal improvements in output and success. The weather will make more of an impact then the perfect size beehive.
Output from every hive is not consistent even though the equipment is exactly the same and in the same place.


----------



## Colobee

So that we are comparing "apples to apples", consider that a plastic frame contains ~15% more cell space than it's wooden counterpart. This is mostly due to the thinner top & bottom bars, with a bit more from the ends. Using Bernard's calculations, that's 167,336 cells in a 2 deep all plastic frame Langstroth. That's an increase of over 20,000 cells or almost 3 additional deep (wooden) frames. The cells in plastic frames in adjoining boxes are ~1/2" apart( vertically), whereas wooden frames are more like ~1-1/2" apart. opcorn:

Someone should probably check my math


----------



## David LaFerney

AR Beekeeper said:


> Any configuration works when keeping bees just for the fun of it, the configuration does matter when trying to make money from bees.


I'm sure that is true, but small sideliners may be able to efficiently utilize options that don't work as well for commercial guys. 

I don't know what commercial beekeepers make in profit, but for what it's worth I can assure you that it's possible to make around $250 per healthy overwintered hive per year - using all 8 frame mediums. And I'm sure there is still plenty of room for improvement.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

Acebird said:


> I can't say...


But yet you do...



Acebird said:


> In a natural hive the queen is not restricted and the hive is not disturbed by a beekeeper. I think that makes them happy.


Professor Seeley found diameters from 15-25 cm in most tree cavaties he dissected. That is 6-10 inches. Compare that to a modern beehive that is as wide as the biggest wild bee nest documented by Tom Seeley. We're keeping bees at the outer range of what's found in nature.

In nature, the nest is restricted - automatically. By a small diameter.



Acebird said:


> ...adding work for a beekeeper


Not really, the opposite. It is work in the early season, yes, but then you have less work preventing (or trying to) and catching swarms. 




Acebird said:


> The weather will make more of an impact then the perfect size beehive.


Poor exculpation for bad beekeeping. I don't say weather hasn't any effect - but it sure effects the honey crop less than a properly "adapted" (if you don't like restricted) broodnest. At least it is the bee that makes the honey, not the hive. Nor the weather. But it sure helps to adapt the hive to how the bees work.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

Colobee said:


> ...


Same is true for small cells or smaller cells. I am using 5.1 mm foundation and it adds up a lot of cells per comb. Normal comb has 5.4 mm and this means 3.75 cells per cm². 5.1 mm = 4.4
cells per cm².

There is no real advantage haveing more cells in a broodbox, though. Other than you can compact/adapt the broodnest to an even smaller diameter. More isn't better necessarily.


----------



## oldforte

BH
"At least it is the bee that makes the honey, not the hive. Nor the weather"
If you don't think that the bees totally depend on favorable weather to make their honey just ask the beeks in drought ridden Ca. or for that matter anyone else that have had weather conditions that drastically reduce nectar and pollen. 

Come-on man


----------



## kilocharlie

I considered converting to all mediums until I noticed the argument about the queen's laying pattern could be negatively affected. The complaint appears to be mostly confined, or at least most pronounced in the northern areas, where a large, but compact brood nest is a bigger advantage.

One of my mentors, a 42 year beekeeper, greatly prefers all the same sized boxes for moving them on his trucks, so another consideration is if you are running a large enough operation for trucks, pallets, and forklifts, then the need for lighter weight hives goes bye-bye. If you are working bees full-time, you don't get stacks of honey supers 10 boxes tall. You stink the bees down out of them, extract them, and slap them back on that afternoon (or exchange out for empties immediately) so they can fill them right back up again by tomorrow, if the nectar flow is intense.

Another consideration may be your number of yards and their relative abilities to produce nectar and pollen. One hive dimension (and thus number of colonies) may indeed allow the bees to produce more honey on one location than another size hive. This can vary quite a great deal from location to location.

Yet another consideration is the subspecies or "race" of bees you are keeping. Russians can indeed "explode" in population suddenly. This tends to make Russian bees "swarmy". Larger frames and lots of extra room added on early helps keep them in the box, but they rarely populate up early enough for almond pollination. They tend to require intense management, but can greatly increase the amount of drawn comb you have if managed successfully.

Buckfast bees seem to do very well in Buckfast hives when raised in Brother Adam's conditions, and with his methods, what with the financing and long term assets (land) of the Catholic Church behind him, and a lot of years under his belt. Only a few beekeepers approach his level of success. Dr. Charles Miller was probably at that level, Dr. Harry Laidlaw sure came close, as Dr. Susan Cobey is certainly approaching, if not having surpassed it in fewer years, but that would not be an apples to apples comparison. Dr. David Tarpy must be getting close, and a number of others - John Harbo, Michael Bush and Michael Palmer come to mind, are certainly approaching it, the Adee family is quite accomplished, as are a number of commercial operators and 4th and 5th generation beekeepers who don't get much press but rake in megabucks despite terrible years. But Brother Adam's 70+ years of beekeeping, searching around the world, with a lot of good help, and impressive record keeping does make for a fairly unique resume.

He measured success by *"the Rule of the Golden Mean"*, which is a mathematical model similar to what stock brokers call a "moving average". If the average yield (total honey extracted divided by the number of colonies in a single drop on a single location), measured over an arbitrary number of years (suppose 10 years, for example 1999 to 2009), goes up a few years later (2002 to 2012), the beekeeper is improving his methods. If the average yield goes down over the same number of years a few years later (2005 to 2015), his methods are not as successful as they were before (unless the amount of forage near that location has been reduced, in which case the beekeeper must adapt, reducing the number of colonies on that drop to keep the yield up).

So the setup can be, as Tank points out, arbitrary depending on your purpose (old guys with bad shoulders lifting tall stacks in their back yards vs. Andre the Giant throwing British standard hives busting full of honey around like Legos vs. a guy with a forklift, who can use a pallet with a sheet of plywood on the forks and just slide the supers off at the same level), or perhaps not be significant at all, depending on how your bees adapt to their environment, hive size, and of course, coupled with your management methods.

Michael Bush - nice post (#25)
Bernard - nice post (#61) Thank you, guys!


----------



## tanksbees

kilocharlie said:


> Buckfast bees seem to do very well in Buckfast hives when raised in Brother Adam's conditions, and with his methods, what with the financing and long term assets (land) of the Catholic Church behind him, and a lot of years under his belt. Only a few beekeepers approach his level of success.


I think the important detail here is that he kept hives in the same locations for an entire lifetime, and slowly shaped the bees into what he wanted. He was able to optimize his harvest extremely well as a result.

500 miles away, with a different race of bees, in a different climate, with different forage, and different pressures, everything would be different. He might not do any better than an average local beekeeper.

Trying to optimize in the way he did would be foolish for most people, without having the same number of hives, a lot of time on their hands, a long lifespan ahead of them, and a consistent location for doing test runs for the next 50 years. In the programming world we call this "premature optimization", and it can be an expensive mistake.


----------



## kilocharlie

True, and the same mathematics can applied, though somewhat more intensively, by migratory beekeepers who keep careful track of their bees' performance on their individual drops, and can adjust and optimize to each one, although usually minus the lag time effect of the most recent year's data. 

It is also much, much harder to predict the current year's weather timing and cumulative change effects on so many more drops when you do not live there. Local anomalies, such as a wind gully, of only a few yards difference in location can make a huge difference on end-of year average yield. How a warm Winter, a dry Spring, a late Spring, etc., affect the success of the bees on that drop is quite a trick to get right year-in, year-out.


----------



## phopkinsiii

Acebird said:


> SHB is the problem with giving a colony more space then they need at any given time.


To this, I would add was moth.


----------



## rwurster

Acebird said:


> ...I can say is it not what the bees prefer...


I've cut out bees from soffits that started as 3" deep combs, ran 6' down the soffit, then went down through a hole cut into the top plate and was between 2 studs almost to the bottom plate (8' long straight down). The queen was laying brood in the wall and in a section of the soffit. From the same property I removed bees from under a shed floor. Same property I had a landscaper load an 8' section of fallen tree on my trailer with a monster colony in it. Same location, vastly different "hives" vastly different cavities. I've seen videos of open air colonies. Every 'natural' colony I've ever come across seems to have had no problems working combs of whatever depth across multiple obstacles. So my question is, how do you know what bees prefer?


----------



## Acebird

rwurster said:


> So my question is, how do you know what bees prefer?


Maybe my statement wasn't clear. In each and every case that you listed the bees were not disturbed until you got there. They are perfectly happy making a hive out of all sorts of cavities as you stated but they do not like being disturbed. They will give up their life to discourage you from doing so.


----------



## Acebird

phopkinsiii said:


> To this, I would add was moth.


I don't know why but wax moth has not invaded boxes of frames left unguarded by bees in my yard right next to active hives. So I don't site them as being a problem with too much space in the hive. It could be a completely different story in your yard.


----------



## phopkinsiii

Acebird said:


> I don't know why but wax moth has not invaded boxes of frames left unguarded by bees in my yard right next to active hives. So I don't site them as being a problem with too much space in the hive. It could be a completely different story in your yard.


I had a terrible problem with SHB and wax moth in my weaker hive this year. Within a week after an inspection, the moth had half-covered both sides of one old comb with cocoons. It was a frame with old comb that the bees had partially filled with nectar.


----------



## kilocharlie

phopkinsiii said:


> To this, I would add was moth.


Actually, there is a nematode that reduces Small Hive Beetle popluation, a "pest" to the beetles, a beneficial to the bees. Good IPM practice if managed correctly.


----------



## phopkinsiii

kilocharlie said:


> Actually, there is a nematode that reduces Small Hive Beetle popluation, a "pest" to the beetles, a beneficial to the bees. Good IPM practice if managed correctly.


I used this and I think it worked. I made so many changes at the same time (stopped feeding pollen patties, closed off the dead space in the weak hive, put in beetle traps, screened bottom board) it was hard to say for sure.
I got mine from Southeastern Insectiairies. If the infestation is bad, you have to treat several times in the summer which gets a little pricey.


----------



## Acebird

phopkinsiii said:


> I made so many changes at the same time (stopped feeding pollen patties,


I think that anyone who has an inkling for feeding there bees should work for a commercial guy and learn how to do it right. It seems like so many people get into trouble feeding their bees.


----------



## rwurster

Acebird said:


> In each and every case that you listed the bees were not disturbed until you got there. They are perfectly happy making a hive out of all sorts of cavities as you stated but they do not like being disturbed.


The bees in the soffit had their entrance blocked multiple times and pesticides sprayed into the cavity. <- Major Disturbances
The tree got cut down and that section was left for dead when they discovered bees were in it. <- Major Disturbance
The sides of the shed had been covered up to the siding in dirt to block the bees entrance and their kids had been sticking sticks through the floor to get out honey. <- Frequent, destructive disturbances

All had prolific honey stores.

Sounds like your crystal ball isn't working too well there Ace :lpf:


----------



## Colobee

BernhardHeuvel said:


> Same is true for small cells or smaller cells. I am using 5.1 mm foundation and it adds up a lot of cells per comb. Normal comb has 5.4 mm and this means 3.75 cells per cm². 5.1 mm = 4.4
> cells per cm².
> 
> There is no real advantage haveing more cells in a broodbox, though. Other than you can compact/adapt the broodnest to an even smaller diameter. More isn't better necessarily.


Bernhard,

I meant no offense - and I appreciate your post. As I said, I've been running all plastic 10 frame mediums for ~30 years. The fact that they are also small cell is something else that should be taken into account. 

That Brother Adam's Buckfast were/are also the strain of bees is yet another consideration. They have been doing quite well for me - almost a half a world away, and a good mile higher in elevation. I've yet to hear of a better strain of bee, as far as I'm concerned. I now have both southern & northern North American Buckfast bloodlines, along with a few Cali Italians to compare.

I just smile when I work through a 3 medium brood chamber and find frame after frame of "wall to wall" brood, from the top box to the bottom (with the usual stores, in proper position). And know that someone, somewhere, is equally convinced that 2 deeps is the secret. It doesn't bother me in the least.

I'd like to believe that the crop could be increased by 50%, just by using 2 deeps, rather than three mediums, but, alas, I suspect that will never happen. I have too dang much (all) medium equipment!

Keep up the great work!:thumbsup:


----------



## Eduardo Gomes

BernhardHeuvel said:


> Find this very enlightening:*Dadant System of Beekeeping*


Bernhard thank you for pdf. I've read almost everything and found it an excellent read.
Very good your post # 61.
A portuguese beekeeper I spoke there two days and has 5000 hives, is changing the operation of the Langstroth model for the Jumbo model. Next year I shall also rehearse this hive model.


----------



## Arnie

Colobee said:


> I've been running all plastic 10 frame mediums for ~30 years. The fact that they are also small cell is something else that should be taken into account.


Thanks, Colobee, this gives me hope.

I started two backyard hives last year with all mediums and plastic small cell frames. So far they have struggled, and I thought it might be the medium/small cell combination. The bees just seem reluctant to draw comb on that foundation unless I push them with a lot of syrup. 
My outyard hives are all deeps and they have done well, so I was getting discouraged by the other hives' lack of success.

Maybe they will do better next year. Thanks.


----------



## Acebird

Arnie said:


> My outyard hives are all deeps and they have done well,


Are the outyard hives just started and are they small cell?


----------



## phopkinsiii

Colobee said:


> Bernhard,
> 
> 
> I just smile when I work through a 3 medium brood chamber and find frame after frame of "wall to wall" brood, from the top box to the bottom (with the usual stores, in proper position). And know that someone, somewhere, is equally convinced that 2 deeps is the secret. It doesn't bother me in the least.


From this, I gather that you haven't noticed a real difference in fecundity of the queen between medium brood chambers and deeps?



Colobee said:


> I'd like to believe that the crop could be increased by 50%, just by using 2 deeps, rather than three mediums, but, alas, I suspect that will never happen. I have too dang much (all) medium equipment!


This is what Brother Adam found. Although the experiment wasn't controlled for all the variables, the conditions were similar-same strain of bees, same nectar source, same weather.


----------



## Arnie

Acebird said:


> Are the outyard hives just started and are they small cell?


They're a mix, Ace, some fresh starts and some over wintered.
None are small cell.


----------



## Acebird

Arnie said:


> None are small cell.


Then it makes it hard to draw a conclusion for your home yard if you do not have the same thing in both yards.


----------



## Arnie

I agree, Ace. Too many variables.
However, that does not mean I don't wonder about it. 

It is reassuring to hear from Colobee that small cell in mediums CAN be done. 
I'm not looking to set honey production records. I would be happy with a super of honey from each hive. Just so they don't continually struggle.


----------



## Acebird

Arnie said:


> It is reassuring to hear from Colobee that small cell in mediums CAN be done.


Of course it can be done. Michael Bush did it. Michael Bush does it.

If you have read all the post that I have on Beesource you would know that everyone struggles in Colorado no matter what you do. It is not the small cell and it is not the mediums. It is Colorado. It is what it is. I hear you have great elk hunting.


----------



## NewbeeInNH

Mike Gillmore said:


> During inspections this spring there were times when I found "eggs" spread up and down across 2 or 3 mediums. With a little bridge comb between the boxes a motivated queen has no problem crossing over. How much time would it take for her to cross to the next frame ... 5-10 seconds? Not much brood loss from that.


Is that why they build comb between boxes? I never knew that. Maybe I won't cut it out from now on.


----------



## Acebird

NewbeeInNH said:


> Maybe I won't cut it out from now on.


I don't anymore.


----------



## NewbeeInNH

Acebird said:


> I don't anymore.


Have you ever tried an experiment with a hive of leaving it completely alone (except for adding space if needed) and seeing what happens?


----------



## Bear Creek Steve

For several years I have been transitioning into all mediums and am now at 85-90% all mediums. Three mediums for the brood chamber. By next year I'll be at 100% mediums. Also running medium NUCs.

Steve


----------



## Acebird

NewbeeInNH said:


> Have you ever tried an experiment with a hive of leaving it completely alone (except for adding space if needed) and seeing what happens?


It is not an experiment it is what I do.


----------



## Mike Gillmore

NewbeeInNH said:


> Maybe I won't cut it out from now on.


I leave it on now, the bees would always build it right back after I scrape it off. Kind of an exercise in futility. Sometimes the bridge comb gets a bit too hard and that I might clean off. Soft comb stays in place.


----------



## NewbeeInNH

Acebird said:


> It is not an experiment it is what I do.


Do you ever go into your hives?


----------



## Acebird

Yes, more so this year than other years. I have an overwintered hive, a split and a package. It is quite obvious which one wins but it is supersizing how close the split and the package are.


----------



## Arnie

Acebird said:


> everyone struggles in Colorado no matter what you do.


Here I disagree. Back in the 80's and 90's I had 25 colonies here in Colorado and I had great success. In fact, at one time Boulder County was one of the top honey producers in the entire country, before the suburbs pushed out the farms.

I know, I know, that was then; I should get with the times.

We got hit really hard with the mites. I knew guys who lost 195 out of 200 hives; just devastating! 

But if you can get a handle on the mites, find a decent location, you can get some fantastic honey. 

Sorry, I am wandering off topic.


----------



## rwurster

That's just Ace talking about things he knows nothing about Arnie. It's his M.O.


----------



## Fusion_power

Brother Adam picked up on and wrote about two problems when using a 2 brood chamber hive configuration. The first is that twice as many frames have to be handled when manipulating the colony. This applies to anything you do including finding the queen. The second is that the queen tends to crawl from brood face to brood face inside the brood nest. She will not move across honey as readily as she will from brood to brood. The only exception to this is that a queen will cross 3 brood chambers of honey to get to a frame of drone cells just so she can fill it with drone eggs. Brother Adam was also comparing his Dadant size boxes vs british nationals which are about 2/3 the size of a Langstroth deep. The british national is a woefully inadequate hive for a prolific strain of bees as Brother Adam wrote about extensively. The only trick I saw that Brother Adam did not pick up is use of narrow gauge frames. He used the Dadant size which iirc is 1.5 inches center to center.


IMO, commercial beekeepers could benefit by switching to a single square box using either Langstroth deeps or perhaps medium frames. Supers should be either shallows or mediums. Why? Because a square box is much more difficult to tip over. It would be large enough that either a single deep square or 2 medium squares would hold all the brood a queen could produce.

What would I really like to be using as a sideline beekeeper? I would love to be able to purchase foundation 11 1/8 inches wide so I could use a square deep brood chamber 11.5 inches deep with narrow frames. One brood chamber would hold all the honey a colony needs to winter and would hold all the brood a prolific queen could possibly lay.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

Colobee said:


> I meant no offense ....I have too dang much (all) medium equipment!


No offense taken, no worries. It is costly to switch, very costly.


----------



## NewbeeInNH

Fusion_power said:


> The second is that the queen tends to crawl from brood face to brood face inside the brood nest. She will not move across honey as readily as she will from brood to brood. The only exception to this is that a queen will cross 3 brood chambers of honey to get to a frame of drone cells just so she can fill it with drone eggs.


Wonder if she doesn't like getting her feet/dragging abdomen sticky. Maybe it gets in the way of her egg laying productivity.


----------



## Acebird

Fusion_power said:


> IMO, commercial beekeepers could benefit by switching to a single square box using either Langstroth deeps or perhaps medium frames. Supers should be either shallows or mediums. Why? Because a square box is much more difficult to tip over. It would be large enough that either a single deep square or 2 medium squares would hold all the brood a queen could produce.


There might be a problem fitting pallets on a truck.


----------



## tanksbees

I don't think most commercial beeks have a problem with "tipping over" in either 8 or 10 frame equipment.

My bees love building vertically and not horizontally. One year with a horizontal lang made that point abundantly clear. Swarming and refusing to build out the outer frames. Finally gave up and supered it and they built up readily.

IMO, If physics were no concern I could see bees preferring two giant vertical frames over any sort of horizontal arrangement. Look at pictures of some wall cutouts, sometimes they build comb 6 or 8 feet long! Seems like they will build comb as long as possible if given the choice.



Fusion_power said:


> IMO, commercial beekeepers could benefit by switching to a single square box using either Langstroth deeps or perhaps medium frames. Supers should be either shallows or mediums. Why? Because a square box is much more difficult to tip over. It would be large enough that either a single deep square or 2 medium squares would hold all the brood a queen could produce.
> 
> What would I really like to be using as a sideline beekeeper? I would love to be able to purchase foundation 11 1/8 inches wide so I could use a square deep brood chamber 11.5 inches deep with narrow frames. One brood chamber would hold all the honey a colony needs to winter and would hold all the brood a prolific queen could possibly lay.


----------



## NewbeeInNH

I think you're right tanksbees. How many times I go into a 5 medium hive, and there's brood, right up there through box 5. Just like the Rose Hive Method guy says - they tend to build in a vertical oval. Maybe we should think twice about how we're trying to stuff them in a horizontal spread.


----------



## tanksbees

NewbeeInNH said:


> I think you're right tanksbees. How many times I go into a 5 medium hive, and there's brood, right up there through box 5. Just like the Rose Hive Method guy says - they tend to build in a vertical oval. Maybe we should think twice about how we're trying to stuff them in a horizontal spread.


Working the boxes is much easier when the stack is shorter. But maybe the bees are more efficient when the stack is narrower and taller. So what do you prefer? Easier for the beekeeper or easier for the bees? Very few options in life are black and white. 

If you believe strongly in this idea, design a tall oval-shaped hive and patent it and wait for the investors to start busting down your door.


----------



## Acebird

tanksbees said:


> Very few options in life are black and white.


You are very right there. I will admit that for a back yard beekeeper it is hard to maintain three hives and stay at three hives. I do not want my hives going over 7 medium boxes high and yet I have one at 8 boxes high. So as a back yard beekeeper that hive is either going to swarm or give me a lot of honey. Come Oct. or Nov. we will see. There are people on this forum that would pee their pants if they had a hive 8 boxes high. It only makes it worse that I do nothing to get it there besides throwing boxes on.

If the stack is shorter it is heavier and all medical records show that heavier is not easier. All engineering computations say that it is not easier so I am curious at how you arrived at this conclusion.


----------



## NewbeeInNH

tanksbees said:


> If you believe strongly in this idea, design a tall oval-shaped hive and patent it and wait for the investors to start busting down your door.


Speaking of which, I wonder how the honey flow hive thing worked out.


----------



## Acebird

NewbeeInNH said:


> I wonder how the honey flow hive thing worked out.


Getting deliveries in this country in August and September means you won't know until a year from now.


----------



## phopkinsiii

I'm not really sure I understand the height argument. If it's surface area of comb that matters for brood rearing and honey storage, wouldn't medium boxes give a shorter total height?
If the surface of a deep frame to a medium is 9/6 or 1.33/1 or 4/3, that means that it takes 4 mediums to equal the surface area of 3 deeps.
If the height of a deep box is 9.525" and a medium is 6.525, 3 deeps is 28. 575" and 4 mediums is 26.1", and the all-medium stack is a bit shorter given the same frame surface area.
3" probably isn't enough to really change the lifting ergonomics either way. If you want to save your back, you have to get your legs under the center of mass. This would be tough with a head-high stack.


----------



## texanbelchers

phopkinsiii said:


> 9/6 or 1.33/1 or 4/3


I'm a Texas Aggie, so this may be wrong... 

9 divided by 6 = 1.5

9/6 = 1.5/1 = 4.5/3


----------



## phopkinsiii

texanbelchers said:


> I'm a Texas Aggie, so this may be wrong...
> 
> 9 divided by 6 = 1.5
> 
> 9/6 = 1.5/1 = 4.5/3


 That's what comes from too many years of using a calculator. I can't do math in my head any more.
So 2 deeps and 3 mediums are about exactly equal.


----------



## Colobee

Arnie said:


> Thanks, Colobee, this gives me hope.
> The bees just seem reluctant to draw comb on that foundation unless I push them with a lot of syrup. Maybe they will do better next year. Thanks.


Per suggestions here, I started painting the plastic frames with extra beeswax. I've had great results. I had about 5 gallons of beeswax, accumulated over the years. I bought a cheap, 3" short bristle brush, from "big orange". I heat the wax in a (metal) coffee can, in a 2 gallon pot of water, on my old Coleman stove. I paint a couple quick swipes, maybe an ounce of extra wax per frame. I did the last batch of 120 medium frames with ~1 gallon of wax.

The bees are drawing it out much quicker vs the way it comes from ML. Some colonies tend to build more cross comb than others. I have one spring swarm that is drawing out beautiful combs. They are now working a fifth medium, starting from just 4-5 old brood combs. I fed them once or twice - a quart or two, when I first hived them. It's been an exceptional year, here.

Maybe this would help you, too?


----------



## Colobee

Acebird said:


> If you have read all the post that I have on Beesource you would know that everyone struggles in Colorado no matter what you do. It is not the small cell and it is not the mediums. It is Colorado. It is what it is. I hear you have great elk hunting.


:scratch: Well, you're right about one thing - the elk hunting is great! Some struggle with bees more than others.


----------



## Striider

Colobee - yup, elk are yummy! Heading up to archery hunt in 3 weeks!  
As far as bees, I totally agree that results in Colorado vary greatly. I had 2 top bars from packages that I lost last year (one in Park county and one in Aurora). They got weak and got robbed, then died at first frost, even though I tried external feeding to strengthen them. I decided top bars just do not add enough control or flexibility for this unpredictable climate.

Had also pretty much decided I was out of the bee hobby, but I had a 5 frame Lang nuc that I tried to do a split in last year that I cleaned out and had sitting in the yard (with built comb in it), and it randomly filled up with a swarm. So, I switched to Langstroth this year, and it has been a night and day difference. I have harvested 70lbs of capped honey out of the swarm hive so far, and need to go grab a medium super off another hive I started from a swarm I captured elsewhere. They were much slower getting going, and moved in a month after the first swarm. Also, I have a third hive starting now from a 3 frame split. They made a queen and she is off to the races. Hope they have enough time to get strong before the cold is here for good.

Weather this year seems to be a huge factor, lots of rain (for Colorado).

For the sake of getting back on track with this thread (which I have read completely and totally appreciate), I am in the 10 frame 1 deep at bottom, all mediums above camp, and find my brood nest is oval shaped, mostly in the bottom deep and a small part of the medium above, 5 or 6 frames wide. The 3 mediums above that are 100% stores. For my second swarm hive, they took over a month to build out to frame 9 and 10, and gravitated toward one side of the hive at first. They are up to 3 mediums above a deep but I have not harvested anything from them yet.


----------



## gnor

Just a question here:
Instead of mediums, why not go to 8 frame equipment? The queen doesn't usually lay wall to wall anyway, and if weight is a problem, an 8 frame deep doesn't weigh that much more than a 10 frame medium.


----------



## gnor

IMHO, if the bees had their druthers, they would prefer a hive with one really tall box, with frames that went from top to bottom. Good for the bees, but impractical for beekeepers. At 3 score and eleven, after a lifetime of heavy physical work, I can still handle a loaded 10 frame deep, but I don't think I want to go much more than that. Individual frames as well would get too heavy for examination. My mentor isn't as strong as I am, and he's switching to 8 frame mediums. 
What I'm saying is that anything we do is a compromise between what the bees prefer and our own physical limitations. Plus, anything we give them is better than a hollow tree. so stick with what's comfortable and the bees will do the rest.


----------



## Michael Bush

>Instead of mediums, why not go to 8 frame equipment?

I converted from ten frame deeps to both eight frame and mediums and have never regretted it.


----------



## RichardsonTX

Here's a comment from Brother Adam's book that needs to be kept in mind..........."One final remark: a hive of the size such as used by us, would merely lead to endless disappointments unless it was stocked by queens of the highest quality and strain."


----------



## Colobee

Amen to that! Buckfast queens have always been part of the equation for me. 

I can't recall how many times I've pulled apart a 3 medium brood chamber that was almost wall to wall brood (with the usual honey/pollen shroud). Plastic frames lessen the gap between supers to the point that the queen seems to be oblivious. I imagine giant frames would have been more spectacular, regardless of how impractical.


----------



## AR Beekeeper

I have used the Modified Dadant frame with the 1 3/8 in spacing as well as the 1 1/2 inch spacing and they are far from impractical.


----------



## Colobee

'With apologies, no offense was intended. 

I should have said "Impractical for me". New boxes, larger frames, more weight - not in my game plan. All mediums, transitioning from 10 frame to 8 frame, I'm headed the other way, and see no downside ( for me).


----------



## NewbeeInNH

I've decided to switch from all mediums to one deep box for the bottom brood box. I have come to the conclusion that mediums just break up the brood too much, and my hypothesis is that the queen will be able to lay more brood with a larger area, without having to skip up to the next box. I have found brood all thru my mediums even up to almost the top, so I wouldn't contain the queen, but I still think having a large "home base" is an asset to productivity. 

I haven't ordered my deeps/frames yet, but it's on my list. Once I get the deeps as the bottom boxes I'm not moving them. Everything else will stay mediums, because heavy deeps are too difficult to lift.

Does anyone know the average feral comb size, when bees totally do their own thing? I'm thinking it's probably closer to deep size than medium size. Might as well work with them.


----------



## Michael Bush

>Does anyone know the average feral comb size, when bees totally do their own thing?

I've seen them in walls that were eight feel long... I don't think you want a hive that is eight feet deep...

I have no problem with the queen not moving from box to box and comb to comb. She easily fills several medium boxes with no hesitation. On the other hand with deep boxes, she hesitates to move to the next box. With Dadant deep boxes she seldom leaves the bottom box.


----------



## NewbeeInNH

Huh. Intuitively, it makes sense that if ferally they like large ovals, then as big of frame as you can manage would be best. But if we're cutting them down as it is and then she's hesitant to leave the deep and cross to a medium...

But how does she know she's crossing into mediumland? LOL. Maybe she stays in the deep because it gives her enough space to be comfortable, and a medium doesn't. 

I also have a feeling a deep brood box gives a warmer, cozier cluster opportunity in winter.

And there's the psychological aspect: What happens in the deep brood box stays in the deep brood box. What happens in the medium supers is up for grabs....


----------



## Mike Gillmore

NewbeeInNH said:


> ... my hypothesis is that the queen will be able to lay more brood with a larger area, without having to skip up to the next box.


The queen takes about a minute to lay an egg. I would guess that a minute would be more than enough time for her to "skip up to the next box". So the actual loss from moving to another box might be ... "1 egg". 

Just bustin' your chops.  There are different ways of looking at Deeps vs. Mediums, with so may variables it can be difficult to really quantify the difference.

I've inspected hives with "eggs" in 4 different mediums. The "gap" doesn't seem to stop her from moving up or down at all.


----------



## texanbelchers

NewbeeInNH said:


> Does anyone know the average feral comb size, when bees totally do their own thing? I'm thinking it's probably closer to deep size than medium size. Might as well work with them.


I'm sure others have done more cutouts, but from what I've seen they use whatever space they have. Under a shed it was about the size of a medium frame about 4' of combs. They had more space above the ground, but they stopped at the wood edge and easily left 4-6 inches open. In a wall I've seen 2-3 big flat sheets in a stud cavity, but also had tall 4" wide comb that looked like studs. The bees don't seem to care and I don't see the blueprints they all seem to follow.

While watching the queen in a observation hive, she quickly moves vertically between frames without skipping a beat. The breaks we force with frames may impact overall performance, but with all the other variables it would be difficult to definitively say one way or the other.


----------



## bluegrass

One point to keep in mind is that in the UK they use single broodboxes to this day, there may be some who are going brood and a half or double brood now, but traditionally it was always a single box, so when Brother Adam choose the dadant hive it was merely because it was the largest brood chamber available.


----------



## Mr.Beeman

I run all mediums and have yet to se a problem with a queen crossing through bee space. My three medium brood chambers are mostly full of brood. Just for the heck of it, I added another medium UNDER the two top honey supers to see what the queen would do. She layed in the (now fourth) brood chamber. That experiment hive is going gangbusters. I am going to try it on more of a wider scale this spring.


----------



## NewbeeInNH

One last thought is that if you don't use excluders, and the queen is all over the hive laying eggs, then you have an organizational issue trying to get to your honey when half the frames have some brood in them.... But if the queen secludes herself happily into that bottom deep and doesn't wander all over the place, then your honey supers are just that - honey supers.

So I'm still leaning towards getting some deeps for the bottoms of my hives. This will be my 5th summer and I'm not really happy with medium brood boxes. Otherwise I love mediums.


----------



## Michael Palmer

Michael Bush said:


> On the other hand with deep boxes, she hesitates to move to the next box.


I rund double deeps with an extra medium, and most of my hives used to be triple deeps. I don't see the queens hesitating to move between deep boxes.


----------



## Rolande

Michael Bush said:


> With Dadant deep boxes she seldom leaves the bottom box.


Not my experience with modified dadants.


----------



## Fusion_power

Mike Palmer, do you think you would see any benefit to having a single deep brood chamber where the number of frames to be handled would be less than in your 2 3/5 configuration? Please think in terms of raising queens, producing nucs, number of boxes to handle, etc.


----------



## Sunday Farmer

NewbeeInNH said:


> One last thought is that if you don't use excluders, and the queen is all over the hive laying eggs, then you have an organizational issue trying to get to your honey when half the frames have some brood in them.... But if the queen secludes herself happily into that bottom deep and doesn't wander all over the place, then your honey supers are just that - honey supers.
> 
> So I'm still leaning towards getting some deeps for the bottoms of my hives. This will be my 5th summer and I'm not really happy with medium brood boxes. Otherwise I love mediums.


I don't use excluders. 
Sometimes they'll peak up into the honey supers laying, but for the most part, whether you use deeps or mediums, you'll find the mass of the brood nest down below, and the honey supers above. I use all mediums as well. (ok ok, adding deeps this year) and when I get a frame of brood up top at harvest, I just swap it out with a side frame from the box underneath. But what is the alternative? Keep a queen that does't make a massive hive and tosses a super of honey? Or risk a couple extra frames of brood where honey should be and still get to pull off a few supers? That latter one, ya, that's where I want my queens to get to. 

If the queen is puttering around in one super, irregardless of it being a deep or a medium, then I am probably requeening anyways. For a couple reasons. 1. I make and sell nucs, so brood baby, brood. 2. I want hives full. I don't want to baby clusters and worry about them come fall to get through the winter. Make me some babies!


----------



## NewbeeInNH

Gee Sunday Farmer, now you're making me want TWO deeps brood boxes on each hive... Give that queen so much room to lay she'll get lost down there... I'm not lifting those deeps tho, which would mean I would never be inspecting that bottom brood box because I'm not lifting the 2nd deep off of it.

Hmm. Well, we'll start with one deep brood box and see how that goes.


----------



## oldforte

Colobee said:


> Amen to that! Buckfast queens have always been part of the equation for me.
> 
> I can't recall how many times I've pulled apart a 3 medium brood chamber that was almost wall to wall brood (with the usual honey/pollen shroud). Plastic frames lessen the gap between supers to the point that the queen seems to be oblivious. I imagine giant frames would have been more spectacular, regardless of how impractical.


This settles all arguments ....use (buy) Buckfast queens ...and all problems are solved....more brood.. more honey.. they are hygenic
what else?


----------



## odfrank

Brother Adam was right. 2009


----------



## odfrank

Brother Adam was right. 2010


----------



## odfrank

Year after years....Brother Adam was right. 2012


----------



## odfrank

He was right in the '80s also.


----------



## Michael Palmer

Fusion_power said:


> Mike Palmer, do you think you would see any benefit to having a single deep brood chamber where the number of frames to be handled would be less than in your 2 3/5 configuration? Please think in terms of raising queens, producing nucs, number of boxes to handle, etc.


Not really. We have such an explosive colony growth in the spring, I would think many would swarm with only one deep brood chamber. I expect my breeder queens to have at least 9 combs of brood at the start of Dandelion bloom, and that they maintain such a large colony through the honey season and into the fall flow. Many have 10-12. I run 9 frames in my brood boxes. How would that work with one brood box? It would with the least prolific queens but not the most. And my bees need to weigh in at 155, so there is up around 80 pounds of winter stores. How would the bees store that much honey in the broodnest if the combs were full of brood? They wouldn't. There would be honey where brood is being raised and the resulting winter cluster would be smaller. With one deep there would be fewer boxes to handle, but handling boxes is easy. It's handling frames that takes time. So I try to handle frames only when necessary.

And my cell building colonies are way stronger than my honey producers, maintaining brood nests with 15 frames of brood and huge populations. No way with one deep brood chamber. 

If I kept bees where you do, or anywhere else in the deep south, and where SHB are an issue, I would probably run one deep and a super. Your bees don't need the honey stores that mine do, and I would think they would require a smaller cluster going into winter.

Does this all make sense?


----------



## Fusion_power

Thanks, Your statement that "handling frames" takes time is dead on the money. I average 15 minutes to open and go through 22 frames in a double deep colony. I usually have to take a cursory look at 8 of the frames and do detailed inspection of the remaining 14. For this reason, I rarely do detailed inspections, usually just a quick look in the top, a look under the bottom, and one or two brood frames checked. If I need to find the queen, I can usually find her after looking at 7 frames just by guessing where she is most likely to be.

So take a minute and think outside the box, I was not thinking of a standard Langstroth deep. I was thinking more in terms of a single deep brood chamber roughly 20 inches square and 11.5 inches deep with corresponding frames. You could get about 150 pounds into one that size if it were only honey. If I had a single deep with 14 frames, I should be able to reduce this to about 10 minutes which includes the handling time for working two boxes. The advantages I see are that a single deep would do everything needed for a brood chamber including honey for winter and space for the cluster. It would eliminate 3 boxes in favor of a single box which should significantly reduce cost. The disadvantages include having non-standard equipment, significant weight in a single brood box (not good for bad backs), possible wintering issues if the combs do not contain crossover holes, and issues that many extractors would not work with them.

So with a single deep as described, how do you think your beekeeping would change? and would there be advantages?


----------



## AR Beekeeper

I have done the square box, and I have done the Jumbo, I recommend the Jumbo. Having the option of using Langstroth size equipment for supers, bottom boards, inner covers etc., makes for simpler yard work. I still needed to use an excluder to keep the queen below the surplus honey supers and having to make a special frame to hold it for use with a square box was expensive in time and material. Searching for queens and doing disease inspections goes very fast in the single brood chamber colonies. Jumbo frames are very heavy and awkward to handle until you become familiar with them.

If you have to make your own frames you can try any depth you wish, you may want deeper frames than the 11.25 frame. You lose 1 1/8 inches of working depth due to the wood in the top and bottom bars so a 11.25 depth frame is only 10 1/8 inches of comb space. The Jumbos I have now are 12 5/8 deep which is a working space of 11 1/2 inches of comb, and I often wish I had another 2 inches of comb space. When you finish your experiment you just cut everything down to standard Langstroth depth, if you wish to stay with standard frame depth.

Compared to northern states, we have no winter. I had 25 boxes in service for eight years and I never lost a colony from that group overwintering. I would lose 2 out of the 24 each of the 12 and 13 frame Langstroths, and the double deep Langstroths lost 1 colony every two or three years. I have seen no need for communication holes through the comb, and I never extract from the brood nest. What I have a problem with is unsettled weather in the spring. If the bees have to be fed in the spring it is a problem if it is cold and wet and the roads become impassible. For peace of mind, in September I still put on a medium of honey for a food chamber.

Jumbo boxes should be in their winter locations before they start to fill them with winter stores. Until they start to store winter food the box weighs little more than a standard deep with brood, after they start to fill with honey it's a gut buster.


----------



## Fusion_power

The biggest reason for stopping at 11 1/4 inches depth is that I can extract a frame up to 10 15/16 inches deep. It is also the depth of standard boards though I could argue that after drying, most lumber is actually 11 1/16.

The reasons for a square hive are because it is less likely to topple over in strong wind and it gives the additional honey storage space needed to overwinter in one box.

I can make tops and bottoms any size I like. My hive stands are designed to allow square hives should I choose to change equipment.


----------



## drummerboy

We converted all of our Deeps into vent/feed boxes, that we flip depending on season, when we went to all mediums in 2007 (We went TF and foundationless the same year). 

We've also experimented with reducing ten frame boxes to 8 frame boxes by gluing 1" rigid insulation on sides and covered with some luann cabinet sheeting to prevent chewing. We've since been purchasing some 8 frame equipment each season. The colonies that survive our winters in the 'insulated' converted boxes always seem to build up quicker in the Spring than those who didn't have insulation....so more experimentation with insulation is up coming 

We noticed no real appreciable changes from our bees performance with any of these changes.


----------



## AHudd

AR Beekeeper said:


> What I have a problem with is unsettled weather in the spring. If the bees have to be fed in the spring it is a problem if it is cold and wet and the roads become impassible.


Add to that, this weird and wet winter. This is now the wettest year on record for the River Valley. We have had even more here in Scott Co.

Alex


----------



## Colobee

Back towards the OP - I've rarely split brood boxes that didn't have ladder comb ( usually drone) between them.

All of this "the queen won't cross" ( or will hesitate to) doesn't seem to mirror reality, at least in my observations. Cabin fever fodder, if you ask me


----------



## AR Beekeeper

Using standard deeps I have not seen queens fail to go up, I have seen a few that did not want to go back down. Using medium frames I have not seen a queen that would not keep brood in all three medium boxes used as a brood nest. I also think that the observations that a queen did not like to cross the top bar to empty comb during the spring buildup was influenced by personal likes and dislikes.

Br. Adam did not like to inspect double deeps, he thought that it used too many man hours. He was correct in that, he was probably repeating the statements by the leading writers in the dislike of the queen passing between boxes. That often happens, we hear or read something and we pass it along without really trying it to see if it is true.


----------



## Mycroft Jones

odfrank said:


> No, it's not.
> Never build a frame for which you don't have an extractor that will fit it, especially in our area. That was the death knoll for my frames that were two deeps tall. A brood chamber full of honey and no way to clean it out.
> If a brood frame is too deep too much honey stays in the brood chamber. In our area we don't need winter stores, so we want the honey pushed up into a honey super where we can harvest it.


Are those the only objections to the Gargantuan frames? Your photo looked similar to the Lupanov frames; were they 20"x20"?

For a beek doing foundationless, and crush/strain rather than extraction, those frames should be fine. I live in a northern area, so winter stores are important.

What was the volume of your Gargantuan hive? That photo looked like it worked really well for you, other than the extractor problem.


----------



## Juhani Lunden

AR Beekeeper said:


> Br. Adam did not like to inspect double deeps, he thought that it used too many man hours. He was correct in that .


The other main reason for Br. Adam to use 12 frame Jumbo was the very important heather crop. It comes late in summer and with two brood chambers it would have been stored in the upper one because the brood area and colony strenght going allready down. 
I tried the Jumbo boxes, but renewal (circulation) of old combs was impossible for me. I use shallow Br. Adams honeyboxes in brood chambers too. 
I think he never had to lift full Jumbos, he was the leader of beekeeping...


----------



## NewbeeInNH

Well, now I'm conflicted. I was going to start using a deep brood box on every hive instead of all mediums because I think it's more cozy and efficient for the colony/queen to have more space without having to go upstairs, but then I started thinking about swapping frames out of the brood box if/when it gets honey bound in the spring, and that wouldn't work if you had one deep and the rest mediums. Two deeps means you're hauling that 2nd deep off of there to check the bottom box or to swap frames from one deep to the other. So now I'm thinking of just sticking with mediums, but piling the mediums up there to give much more space to the hive.

Honestly, the slovenian hives still look interesting. You don't lift anything, just pull the frames from the back. But, you're really stuck with only a couple boxes, the hives are all uniform that way. Do they never want to stack boxes higher?

It's time someone invented a new hive. Maybe a filing cabinet type of setup where the boxes slide forward for inspection? Or a tall cabinet with pull-out drawers. And while you're at it, preinstall with a GoPro Bee camera in there to keep an eye on em, and a thermostat/hygrometer in there, readable from inside the house.

I'm giving away an idea here. Someone could get rich. Go for it. 

This lifting boxes is for the birds.


----------



## AR Beekeeper

The brood nest will not get honey bound if you put on a surplus honey super or two when nectar is being brought in. With a deep brood chamber you never lift anything heavier than a medium full of honey.

There was a commercial beekeeper in Ontario, Canada in the early 1900s named J. L. Byer. He operated several hundred colonies and they were in 3 styles of hives, 8 frame Langstroths, 10 frame Langstroths, and 10 frame Jumbos. He said that the man operating the colonies was more important than the style of hive as far as the amount of honey produced. His colony averages differed about 5 pounds between the 3 styles of hives. He did say that the Jumbo hive was the most efficient in man hours.


----------



## NewbeeInNH

When Canadian beekeepers speak, I listen.


----------



## beemaster2015

when I get my hives going im going to use 2 deeps for the queen and brood and the rest in mediums and small for the supers . I had a post similar about the boxes and some guys told me to do it that way so im going to give it a try . !!!!


----------



## Juhani Lunden

AR Beekeeper said:


> The brood nest will not get honey bound if you put on a surplus honey super or two when nectar is being brought in. With a deep brood chamber you never lift anything heavier than a medium full of honey.


In Buckfast they had to move bees for heather. I suppose carrying and moving extra full boxes was not an option.

In practise sometimes there are situations when you have two bad options: lifting the whole Jumbo or first taking frames out to make it lighter and lifting two pieces: dead ones in spring ( fed full in the autumn), queen failure during late summer, taking food frames to hives etc.


----------



## Fusion_power

So summarizing the advantages of using large brood chambers:

1. Permits use of a single box for all the brood produced by a single queen
2. Reduces the number of frames that have to be inspected when manipulating the broodnest
3. Properly positions the colony to produce honey from a fall flow that otherwise would be placed in the broodnest
4. Reduced cost of equipment by using one box instead of 2 for broodnest
5. Does not present a barrier to the queen from moving across honey to lay eggs

And the disadvantages:

1. non-standard equipment
2. Weight in a single brood box (not good for bad backs)
3. Wintering concerns if the combs do not contain crossover holes
4. Many extractors won't work with the larger frames
5. All equipment has to be hand built, not available from any of the manufacturers


----------



## Stephenpbird

NewbeeInNH said:


> It's time someone invented a new hive. Maybe a filing cabinet type of setup where the boxes slide forward for inspection? Or a tall cabinet with pull-out drawers.



WE have hives like this in Germany, they are called hinterbehandlung beute and some of the very old beekeepers still use them. Some beekeepers have even put draw slides on them so one can manage them as you suggest. Funnily enough they were mostly replaced, for good reason, by the American style of hive which is manipulated from the top ie Langs.



Juhani Lunden said:


> In Buckfast they had to move bees for heather. I suppose carrying and moving extra full boxes was not an option.


I like the line in Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey, where B Adam says he can remember a time when they took hives to the edge of Dartmoor in wheelbarrows. I bet they took very little extra with them.
For the love of Bees by Lesley Bill is about the story of Brother Adam, a very enjoyable read and provides an insight to Brother Adams life and how hard they actually had to work at Buckfast. For instance, at one time they only had a two frame extractor which was upstairs so every super had to be carried upstairs and then extracted. 

Did brother Adam have it wrong? 
He had the opportunity to standardize the hive since they had such a mixture of hives at one time. I wonder if the real question should be, If Buckfast Abbey was already using one style of hive, Langstroths. Would they have changed over to the Dadant?

I doubt it.


----------



## drummerboy

NewbeeInNH said:


> Well, now I'm conflicted. I was going to start using a deep brood box on every hive instead of all mediums because I think it's more cozy and efficient for the colony/queen to have more space without having to go upstairs, but then I started thinking about swapping frames out of the brood box if/when it gets honey bound in the spring, and that wouldn't work if you had one deep and the rest mediums. Two deeps means you're hauling that 2nd deep off of there to check the bottom box or to swap frames from one deep to the other. So now I'm thinking of just sticking with mediums, but piling the mediums up there to give much more space to the hive.
> 
> Honestly, the slovenian hives still look interesting. You don't lift anything, just pull the frames from the back. But, you're really stuck with only a couple boxes, the hives are all uniform that way. Do they never want to stack boxes higher?
> 
> It's time someone invented a new hive. Maybe a filing cabinet type of setup where the boxes slide forward for inspection? Or a tall cabinet with pull-out drawers. And while you're at it, preinstall with a GoPro Bee camera in there to keep an eye on em, and a thermostat/hygrometer in there, readable from inside the house.
> 
> I'm giving away an idea here. Someone could get rich. Go for it.
> 
> This lifting boxes is for the birds.


LOL; Lifting boxes are for the young and strong...(not the birds...unless they're 'very big' birds)

The file cabinet set up sounds interesting but I worry about 'crushed' bees...

The ability to interchange frames anywhere within the hive made the decision to go with all 'mediums' easy. Its been 8 years for us with no noticeable reduction in bee performance (been thinking we should've went to all shallows now ).

We had a great honey year in 2015...one colony had 8 mediums, had to use a ladder to harvest (won't do that again)


----------



## Mycroft Jones

Stephenpbird said:


> WE have hives like this in Germany, they are called hinterbehandlung beute and some of the very old beekeepers still use them. Some beekeepers have even put draw slides on them so one can manage them as you suggest. Funnily enough they were mostly replaced, for good reason, by the American style of hive which is manipulated from the top ie Langs.


I've been planning to build such hives for myself. They are still used in Slovenia. What are the good reasons they were replaced for? How is Langstroth better?


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

Michael Palmer said:


> How would that work with one brood box?


Better. Better one would expect.


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Fusion_power said:


> And the disadvantages:


I would add 

6. Circulation of broodframes is tricky if using only on brood chamber per hive


----------



## jlaudiofan

Stephenpbird said:


> WE have hives like this in Germany, they are called hinterbehandlung beute and some of the very old beekeepers still use them. Some beekeepers have even put draw slides on them so one can manage them as you suggest. Funnily enough they were mostly replaced, for good reason, by the American style of hive which is manipulated from the top ie Langs.


I haven't had much luck finding clear plans / blueprints for building this type of hive (AZ hive). I really like the idea of an all inclusive building that can be the beekeeping workshop. It would make hive inspections much easier by simply opening the back door of the hive and looking. The frames look pretty easy to manipulate as well.

I will eventually work my way towards this goal. Its going to take some time, but I think it will be worth it.

EDIT: I might have misunderstood, the AZ hive does not have pull out drawer style hives, but the frames slide in and out on metal rods. Metal for durability I would imagine.


----------



## DirtyLittleSecret

Priceless. Though, I would love to experiment with a deep Dadant style just out of curiosity. There's something about a deep frame fully filled and ready to go "boom!" that a medium just doesnt have. Its all good fun.



Michael Bush said:


> If you want to cook meat and have it be tender you do one of two things:
> 
> 1) cook it very hot and very quick
> 2) cook it very slowly at just simmering temperatures
> 
> So which is it? Both.
> 
> Why do opposites often have the same results while something in the middle has the opposite result?
> 
> In the case of mediums vs deeps vs dadant deeps the argument started between Langstroth and Dadant. Dadant felt that a deep was not enough comb for a queen to lay in and ten frames also were not enough. He also felt that 1 1/2" spacing would prevent swarming by providing more cluster space. Keep in mind that both Dadant and Langstroth were operating on the idea that there would be one box for brood. Dadant was correct on two counts. The queen seemed to be able to fill a Dadant 12 frame box with 11 1/4" frames just fine (11 if you do the 1 1/2" spacing) and not run out of room where in the North, at least, the Langstroth Deep with 10 9 1/4" frames was not quite big enough. So most Northern beekeepers ended up using two Langstroth deeps for the brood box that they would overwinter in while Dadant was using one 12 frame box. With the two Langstroth deeps, the frame is just deep enough that the queen hesitates to move up to the second box. With the Dadant deep she hardly ever moves up to the next box because the combs are deep enough for her. Now you use mediums, she does not hesitate at all to move up a box. So, in my experience, the worst size for a brood box is a deep. The best is either a Dadant deep or a medium. I don't think Brother Adam was wrong. His comparison was mostly British Standard deeps compared to a Dadant deep. He may have also experimented with the Langstroth deep. Of those three, I think the Dadant deep is the best choice, which was his conclusion. I'll bet if he had to manage all the boxes himself he would have preferred eight frame mediums by the time he was 50 or so... but I'm sure he had help. A 12 frame shallow super is very heavy AND very ungainly... I'm sure 12 frame hives are productive in a warm climate like California or a moderate climate like England. Not so much in Nebraska. Eight frames seem to work better here in the bitter cold than ten or twelve.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

When using deeps you need to use a follower board. As the jumbo deep is too much space for smaller colonies and during spring buildup. To adapt the hive size to the smaller colony a follower board is necessary. At least in a 12 frame jumbo deep.


----------



## Michael Bush

>Metal for durability I would imagine.

Mostly to have a very small area that can be propolized and one that the propolis will easily come off of.


----------



## jakearoo

Michael, You say that Queens are hesitant to move up out of a deep. I have been trying to convert to all medium apiary but it is difficult since deeps are so standard. I have converted to all 8 frame boxes but had resigned myself to using one deep and two mediums as my standard brood chamber. I am fairly new to this and have noticed the resistance to moving into the medium supers on top of the deep. As well, I use deep nuc boxes for swarm traps and that starts the nasty cycle all over again. So, do you have any suggestion for doing the conversion? I hate the thought of trying to cut all those deep frames down to mediums while they are part of a working hive. Thx. RCC


----------



## Michael Bush

First, I would say if you are changing frame size and combs then I would also change cell size to either natural comb or small cell at the same time. It will be the same amount of work. It just requires that you use either small cell foundation or foundationless frames.

The concept, of course, is to get to a point where all of the old combs (deeps, large cell etc.) are out and all of the ones you want (small cell and mediums) are what you now have. So first, you need to view all of what you don't want as a liability to be eliminated and all of what you do want as an asset. During a flow anything but brood is fair game to remove. During a dearth, honey and pollen are assets. At any time brood is an asset. At any time you can remove empty frames. There are several ways you can deal with any given deep frame. You can leave them in a deep and any excess that can't be filled with a deep (because you pulled them out) you can fill in with a medium. This is what I tend to do if there are more deeps than mediums. If you have more mediums than deeps, you can put the deeps in two medium boxes (it will hang down into the medium box below). If you have only one or two deeps with brood you can cut the comb to fit a medium frame and rubber band it into the medium frame. You can also get the queen and a couple of frames of brood on the other side of an excluder from the frames you wish to remove and wait for the brood to emerge in those frames and then remove them from the hive. These are the concepts.

So now to begin. The easiest time to begin is probably now. On a warm day you can look in the hive and pull any frame that is empty. You may have an entire box worth of empty deeps. This time of year there has been no flow to start refilling them and brood rearing is just getting into gear probably. The sooner you get the queen on the other side of an excluder from the combs you wish to remove, the better. If you have drawn medium frames, then try to get the queen on those. It's kind of early at lest in my part of the world to expect them to draw comb but they will be in about a month. So if you just keep removing empty frames until then, and after the flow gets into full swing you can steal any deeps with pollen and honey and harvest the honey. The pollen you can feed to the chickens (assuming there are any chickens) or cut them out and tie them into mediums (rubber bands probably...). Then applying the principles above you juggle things until all the boxes are full of frames. Later if you had comb on the bottom of a medium frame that was in a deep box, you can cut it off and rubber band it into a medium frame. If you have comb on the bottom of a deep (that was in two medium boxes) you can cut that off and rubber band it into a medium frame.

I don't know how to just make it a step by step unless I make assumptions about some brute force method, but that is also a possibility. You can simply do a "cut out" where you cut every frame of brood to fit a medium and rubber band all the combs into mediums and harvest all the honey and scrap or cutout all the pollen. If you have thin strips of brood left over you can put several in a frame to fill it out. This would be a "brute force" method and you could do it in an afternoon as long as there is a decent amount of nectar and pollen available. 

A scaled back version of this is to cutout two combs of brood and put those with the queen on them on the other side of an excluder and wait for all the brood in the deeps to emerge and then pull them all.

If you don't want to do any cut outs of combs, then you could pull empty frames, replace with mediums and wait for the queen to be laying in some of the mediums and then pull those above an excluder.

All in all, I play it by ear and juggle it the best I can without stealing brood from them.


----------



## jakearoo

Michael, Thank you. As usual, you are too generous with your time. I do already have almost all my bees on foundation-less frames. I was smart enough to read your book not long after I got my first hives. And I have put medium frames in some of the deep boxes and the bees were cooperative enough to draw out very vice foundation (with eventual brood or honey) from the bottom bar to the bee space in the bottom. Was fairly simple to cut it off cleanly and rubber band it into medium frames. 
As for the time of year, here in San Diego it seems to be always summer. This last 2 or 3 months have finally brought lots of rain and we have lots of flowers. I am looking at a whole hillside of beautiful blue rosemary bushes in full bloom as I write this. The bees have been active bringing in all kinds of pollen and nectar. In fact, I caught a very large swarm just last weekend. I can't figure out how the hive they left is going to get their virgin queen mated but again, I am fairly new to this and it is apparent that San Diego does not follow the usual patterns of other parts of the country. I was pretty happy with the idea of mixing a deep with medium boxes but as I said, I have noticed the queens are none to eager to go up into the medium above the deep. Interesting that Michael Palmer says his standard setup is one deep and two mediums for his brood chambers. I know he juggles the order of the boxes depending on circumstances, maybe that makes a big difference. Thanks again and, 
Best regards, RCC


----------

