# I need advice on how many brood boxes where i live and any more advice.



## Edymnion (May 30, 2013)

You'll get a lot of people saying "beekeeping is local, find your nearest beek community and do what they do", which is a good answer, but its not always that easy.

So I'll say that I'm north of you and overwintered my bees in a glorified 5 frame nuc, and they did just fine. The general rule of thumb that I see is that the longer your winters are, the more you need additional boxes. Down here in the south, we can easily get away with just a single deep because the winters aren't long enough for the bees to starve out. When you start getting up Chicago way, you start wanting more boxes for the additional food reserves for your bees.

Personally, next year I plan on wintering in double deeps, simply because thats what I prefer to use for brood the rest of the year.


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## Rusty Hills Farm (Mar 24, 2010)

I overwintered in 10-frame double deeps--but I keep Cordovans and they are heavy brooders with big clusters. If you have Carnies, then a single deep certainly sounds feasible pretty much anywhere in the state. Italians could probably go either way. 

JMO

Rusty


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

welcome aboard chris!

i use a single deep here and medium supers. last year my largest hive ended up with 6 mediums over the deep at the end of the main nectar flow.

another option to consider is using all mediums as several folks on the forum here do. the advantage is that you have more flexibility when it comes to moving frames around. i am going to try a couple that way this year.


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## MsBeHaven (May 31, 2013)

Here in Birmingham I have 3 hives on double deeps and one on a single deep. The last one I plan to put on double deep this year. It was a weak package I babied along all last summer. I would think that double deep helps the swarming factor but I'm just going into my second year. Take any advice with a heaping of salt

Anyone else in north/ central Alabama see anything blooming yet? Things are budding out here. Just need a week or two of warm +50 weather and its off to the races...

Of course 4 inches of snow last week didn't help


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## burns375 (Jul 15, 2013)

disadvantage is $$$ and more equipment.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

MsBeHaven said:


> Anyone else in north/ central Alabama see anything blooming yet? Things are budding out here. Just need a week or two of warm +50 weather and its off to the races...
> 
> Of course 4 inches of snow last week didn't help


not seeing any blooms here on the mountain yet, but lots of pollen coming in today. looks like good foraging weather for at least the next week, and brood up should begin in earnest. we had nine inches of snow last tuesday and wednesday.


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## Crsswift70 (Sep 9, 2013)

We have maples blooming and some yellow flowered plants in cut fields. Mine are bringing in a good bit of pollen. They overwintered with one deep and a medium on one and a deep with two mediums on the other. This was my first winter so i left them with all of their Fall stores. Did an inspection today and found that they still had a lot of honey left. The top medium was still in the 30 pound range i'm guessing. And, both hives are bursting at the seams with bees. Drone cells aplenty, but didn't see any queen cells.


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## Chrissmith1980 (Feb 17, 2014)

Im confused now lol.I thought you just left One deep or two deeps over the winter for the bees and that was theres all year around and any honey in supers you put on in the spring is honey you harvest.If you use two deeps wouldn't you have more bees in it than a single deep hive?


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

It's usually much more complicated than that.

Beekeeping is much more of an art, than many other types of agriculture, though each field has their own art aspects. Beekeeping is a strong interaction of many different things, some of those being; location, stock, forage (affected by climate and weather), the beekeeper's management style and technique, etc.


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## pannu96 (Mar 7, 2012)

I successfully overwinter in one deep box, here in Canada, so I would assume it would work for you.


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## Chrissmith1980 (Feb 17, 2014)

So if I use one deep would that make less bees in the hive?I also thought about not using a qreen extruder so wouldn't the qreen lay brood in the honey supers if she didn't have enuff room in the deep box?


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## Comper100 (Nov 25, 2013)

Here in Aus many use one deep but I'm aiming for 2 deep brood setup, I may or may not use my excluder for the 3rd. Not yet seen how they work, some of my bees a re quite big and I would imagine its hard to get through for them.


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

Chrissmith1980 said:


> So if I use one deep would that make less bees in the hive?I also thought about not using a qreen extruder so wouldn't the qreen lay brood in the honey supers if she didn't have enuff room in the deep box?


As a general rule yes, a good queen can lay more than one box of brood, so giving her two deeps would in most cases get you a larger total number of bees than one deep brood box with an excluder on top, unless of course you just use the single deep and no excluder, then she will probably lay in a super or two that you put on. If you are a new beekeeper, then I would not use the excluder at least for the first year until you get more experience.


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## burns375 (Jul 15, 2013)

jmgi said:


> As a general rule yes, a good queen can lay more than one box of brood, so giving her two deeps would in most cases get you a larger total number of bees than one deep brood box with an excluder on top, unless of course you just use the single deep and no excluder, then she will probably lay in a super or two that you put on. If you are a new beekeeper, then I would not use the excluder at least for the first year until you get more experience.


During most of the year you'll be fine. But when the flow hits the brood nest will become backfilled with nectar, so it is important to pull out honey. She will move up onto newly drawn comb or unfilled drawn honey supers. 

Also the queen may not fully lay the bottom box of frames in cooler climates or the outside frames, reducing the brood nest


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## seapro220 (Mar 14, 2013)

I'm still new with this being my 2nd year - but I'm going to be using 2 deeps here in SC. I tried to do this last year, but had so much trouble with SBH that I had to combine to keep from loosing 2 hives. As far as blooming - by girls are starting to go crazy now bringing in some pollen - probably every 12 to 15th bee. I think it's the maples along the creek in the back, so I just need to keep a good eye on them for the next few weeks till the 'bloom' actually starts.


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

burns375 said:


> . Also the queen may not fully lay the bottom box of frames in cooler climates or the outside frames, reducing the brood nest


Correct, that is why I said more than one box is required for a good queen, bees and queens don't always use the space given to them the way we would like, as you say, and from my experience if given more than one brood box, the lowest box ends up with just a little brood and lots of pollen, so the main brood rearing area ends up being the next box up, and even more.


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