# Spring Time Maintance: Hive body rotation



## Scotty (May 17, 2004)

Yeah it's true. However it's not necessary. It's just a technique that will help the bees build up and get going faster. While you're moving the two supers (reversing their locations) you can check the bottom board as well and give it a good cleaning.

Winter Config:
A
B 


Spring Config:
B 
A


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## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

In my view, reversing is a waste of time and effort.

I have yet to see any improved utilization of
the brood chamber as a result of reversing,
nor have I seen a quicker build-up.

The queen's entourage can certainly guide the
queen down as easily as up. They can also lead
her across frames, around frames lacking
"communication holes", etc.

One thing that reversing WILL do is to slow down
spring colony build-up when the brood area is
a circular area split between the two brood
chambers. What happens is that the circle is
transformed into two isolated half-circles,
and the bees are forced to tend the two
isolated brood areas. This is said by some
to be a good anti-swarming technique, but I
can't claim that it (or any approach) is a
sure-fire way to delay or prevent swarming.

Making splits is about the only high-reliability
way I know to avoid swarming, but even it is
not foolproof.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

Thats a good point you make. Everywhere I read, they sugeest reversing. I suppose at one point or another, a beekeeper needs to form his own opinion.

It strikes me as unnessasary because commerical beekeepers do not reverse.


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## clintonbemrose (Oct 23, 2001)

In the spring and summer I try to reverse monthly as long as I don't break up the brood nest. I have found that I get many more bees by doing this. I must have dumb bees because I have found that most queens will not go down once they are up.
Clint


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## cochran500 (May 20, 2003)

Last spring I reversed boxes on some of my hives and didn't on others. The ones I reversed had a larger population and were the most productive hives.


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## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

I wonder if "reversing having a positive impact"
has any correlation to the use of deeps as
brood chambers. 

Can those who say they have seen a difference
define their woodenware configurations?

The theory would be that when using mediums as
brood chambers, the queen and her entrouage are
quickly forced to deal with "crossing frame
boundries", and perhaps "get used to it". With
deeps, it takes 1.5 times as long to "fill up the
chamber", and may not be as "well learned" by
the bees.

I converted to 100% mediums because it made
"compressing brood chambers" easier, and
"compressing" makes a serious difference in
a colony's ability to produce comb honey, if
you are willing to slog through, and "rebuild"
some semblance of a cohesive brood area out
of the collection of frames with some brood
in the chamber you remove.


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## Kirby Kishbaugh (Dec 21, 2004)

I am running two deep supers on my 150 hives and rotate bottom to top twice a year Febuary just before I start feeding for spring build up,and again late may.This has cut my swarming down by 75%and increased my honey production by 24%.
I am just a small time back yard beekeeper and still have a lot to learn. Just because this works for me in Colorado dosent mean that it will work else where.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I have tried reversing. I wasn't impressed.

I run all mediums. If I happen to be in a hive and the bottom box is empty, I'll move it above the ones with the brood in them. Otherwise I don't bother. But that's the same as I did when I had deeps too. I agree with Jim. (I hope this doesn't get to be a habit) If you split the brood chamber up it just slows the bees down reorganizing everything.

George Imirie, (who I respect greatly and often disagree with) on the other hand, reverses constantly from spring until after swarm season. What with constantly reorganizing the brood nest they are too busy to swarm I guess.









I have never even attempted that.


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## Patrick Scannell (Jul 3, 2004)

jfischer: 

Could you please elaborate on "compressing brood chambers"? 

What is involved, and why do you do it? --Tnx


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## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

> Could you please elaborate on "compressing 
> brood chambers"?

I can try, but it would be better to read
one of Richard Taylor's books on comb honey.

Given 3 or 4 mediums and a decently built-up
colony, one removes one or two of the mediums,
and then goes through them, putting the frames
with brood or eggs back into the remaining
brood chambers still on the bottom board.

This means that you are "redesigning" the
brood cluster, so it takes a bit of creativity
to get things right. You want frames with brood
adjacent to each other, so this means that every
frame in the entire set of boxes is going to be
removed and looked at. When you are done, you
have removed frames without brood from the
remaining boxes, and replaced them with frames
with brood, and you have a cohesive "brood blob"
that the bees can keep warm and moist, and
manage.

Now you shake all the bees in the remaining
boxes, and take away the boxes you took off.

You can now add your comb honey supers, and
let the bees store honey, draw comb, etc.

Needless to say, doing this with deeps is
more difficult, as you have fewer frames
to play with, and fewer options.

This is a VERY over-simplified summary. For
the complete commentary, buy any book by
Richard Taylor with "comb honey" in the title.
(I think he wrote about 6 of them.)


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

The Richard Taylor book I have is "The Comb Honey Book". The Eugene Killion one I have is "Honey in the Comb".

Both explain at least one method how to do this and I remember a few variations.


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## Patrick Scannell (Jul 3, 2004)

Thanks. I'll order those books and get reading.


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## clintonbemrose (Oct 23, 2001)

I use all deeps for the brood chambers 2 high for the ones I transport and 3 high for my experimental hives at home
Clint


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## guatebee (Nov 15, 2004)

I guess reversing and re-designing the brood chamber is a human need more than a bees´need.

Much has been written in this forum lately regarding the natural way of bees organizing themselves. Observations on nest structure and cell size could fill a book. Complementing this trend towards back to basics beekeeping, there are also many interesting views on TBHs, which provide for more natural building. Housel positioning is also part of this new era.

Feral colonies escape to ALL forms of human intervention, and I wonder what would happen if we experimented with not messing around with the brood nest at all. Feral colonies maintain the same nest size all the time, reducing or expanding its USE as the seasons demand. Combs are static and bees are the only authorized personnel to mess with it !!
The reason for reversing and manipulating combs in the core of the hive is, IMO, due to the fact that we humans have decided to split the brood area from the begining by giving the "right volume/space" to the bees in the form of several boxes. This responds to our inability to handle large, heavy combs.
It is quite common to see a two-super brood nest fully occupying all combs, but still, there is a division created by top bars and bee space between the two boxes.

A feral colony that occupied a cavity similar in volume to a two story set up, would not split its brood nest in half. Instead, bees will build large, longer than wider combs and organize their nest to suit their needs.
I would like to hear from someone who has tried building frames twice the standard depth, fitted inside two standard boxes nailed together.
(Standard here refers to human standard!!!!)
I know before you have to tell me, that such frames would be too fragile to manipulate... but that is precisely the point: don´t disarrange what bees have naturally chosen to build !!

Honey storage supers are a different ball game. Hopefully the bees will expand the brood nest as they build up in population, and become aware that there is extra room on top to store honey.

The only reason for going into the brood nest should be to check for disease and to cull old comb.

Any comments?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

>>In my view, reversing is a waste of time and effort.
I have yet to see any improved utilization of
the brood chamber as a result of reversing,
nor have I seen a quicker build-up.
>>Making splits is about the only high-reliability
way I know to avoid swarming, but even it is
not foolproof. 

I agree with Jim. This is what I have found in my beekeeping operation, by accident due to lack of time. Most all books you will read suggest reversing to prevent swarming, I prefer splitting for swarm control. These last few years I have been reversing the broodnest to the bottom chamber six weeks before the honeyflow, but only because I needed to draw out comb for my brood nest due to lack of comb in my operation. The bee draw comb out much better above the nest than below.

>>I wonder if "reversing having a positive impact"
has any correlation to the use of deeps as
brood chambers.

I only use deeps. I dont "house keep" my hive mutch. I rairly clean the frame bottoms in my brood chambers at all. Mostly just brace and burr comb along side of the frames as I encounter it. I feel the bur comb under and over the frames act as a ladder b/w boxes. Though I am ever so careful to prevent bee squish as I place the chamber back together, just a bit of smoke.


Ian


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

With the PermaComb the bees fill the space pretty much solid between the boxes. I think it allows the queen better access between one box and the next. The effect is similar to one large comb.

Dadant deeps (11 1/4" frames in an 11 5/8" box) are an attempt at this idea of a larger comb so the queen won't have to move to another box. Dadant used them in a 19 7/8" by 19 7/8" box so that it would be large enough for a brood nest. Lanstroth thought a 16 1/4" by 19 7/8" box 9 5/8" deep was large enough for the entire brood nest. Over the years beekeepers have decided that it wasn't and went to two deeps (or some other equivelant) instead.

I have one double wide Dadant deep hive at the moment. It's 32 1/2" by 19 7/8" and holds 22 frames.

Brother Adam at Buckfast Abbey also concluded that Dadant was correct and that the 19 7/8" by 19 7/8" boxes with the extra deep (11 1/4") frames was the most productive.

Most of the reversing is done to prevent swarming. Especially the people who reverse repeatedly through the spring and summer. I belive it does help prevent swarming at a cost of much labor for the bees to rearrange things.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

It took me forever to refind this forum after its reconstruction. Glad to be back,.. I am a bit of a computer idiot!!


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## cochran500 (May 20, 2003)

I use 2 deeps for the brood chambers. 1 hive inparticular that I didn't reverse on, the queen had not moved down into the bottom box in mid May. Of course she just may not have been a very good queen. Here where I live our honey flow is starting to taper off in May.


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## BerkeyDavid (Jan 29, 2004)

Is there any advantage in compressing the brood chamber if you are not making comb honey? If you do compress the brood chamber, do you also move it down to the bottom box?
I am overwintering in 4 mediums. So if I were going to reverse it gets a little complicated! Do you move 1234 to 4321?
If its confusing for me I imagine it would be even more so for the bees?
So I was thinking about rebuilding the whole hive frame by frame. 
It gets even more confusing if you read Walt --- (forgot his last name) about keeping empty supers on top all the time...
david


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## db_land (Aug 29, 2003)

I reverse about Feb 15 and begin light syrup feeding. My objective is to maximize foragers for the start of the main flow in mid April. Note, I only reverse if the bottom box is totally EMPTY of brood.

IMO every hive should be thoroughly inspected early spring, so reversing is really no extra work. It's a good time to rate the queen versus her peers (laying pattern, size of brood area), cull old comb and generally clean and inspect the hive.

My experience is that reversing results in many more bees. If your objective is maximum honey production or splits/packages for increase, then reversing is a great tool.


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## BerkeyDavid (Jan 29, 2004)

Triangle:

do you use deeps?

Is there anything in bloom Feb 15th? I am just trying to figure out what date would be appropriate here in northern Ohio.

What you say makes sense to me.

david


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## dcross (Jan 20, 2003)

I would guess you would want to wait until March 1st, maybe even later.


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## db_land (Aug 29, 2003)

BerkeyDavid: Usually around Feb 15 is the start of red maple bloom here (it may be earlier this year). March thru April there's a variety of fruit trees and other plants blooming - not enough to make surplus honey, but enough to support a strong build up. Our main flow (Tulip Poplar) starts around April 26th and ends around June 15. From egg to forager takes about 40 days. Working backwards from April 26 - I want all possible brood cells filled with eggs/brood by March 15. To achieve this you need lots of nurse bees (25-35 day old bees) which takes me back to Feb 15 as the time to reverse and stimulate with light syrup.

Last spring all hives were two deeps. Around August/September I split these into a deep and one medium (one hive became two hives) for overwintering. The medium is currently on top. I plan on reversing (Feb 15 - maybe a few days earlier if conditions are right), but only if the deep is empty of brood.


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## BULLSEYE BILL (Oct 2, 2002)

>My objective is to maximize foragers for the start of the main flow in mid April. Note, I only reverse if the bottom box is totally EMPTY of brood.

>IMO every hive should be thoroughly inspected early spring, so reversing is really no extra work. It's a good time to rate the queen versus her peers (laying pattern, size of brood area), cull old comb and generally clean and inspect the hive.


I agree totally, and is exactly what I try to do every spring.


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## VABeeKEEPER (Dec 12, 2004)

db_land (aka Triangle):

You write that you: 

"I reverse about Feb 15 and begin light syrup feeding. My objective is to maximize foragers for the start of the main flow in mid April. Note, I only reverse if the bottom box is totally EMPTY of brood."

I completely agree with your statement and observation. I do my reversing here in Northern Virginia a little later; 1 March but I start feeding 1:1 syrup the middle of Feb for spring buildup. I run 2 deeps as the brood chambers.

"IMO every hive should be thoroughly inspected early spring, so reversing is really no extra work. It's a good time to rate the queen versus her peers (laying pattern, size of brood area), cull old comb and generally clean and inspect the hive."

Absolutely! Same thing I do and for the same purpose. This is my major hive inspection time as well.

"My experience is that reversing results in many more bees. If your objective is maximum honey production or splits/packages for increase, then reversing is a great tool."

I create tow splits from my Carnoilan's and normally one from my Italians during this period and this also allows for maximun honey production.


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