Thoughts on Brood and Half management.

[prakel]

I read, on quite a regular basis, comments from beekeepers along the line of 'brood and half is a nightmare' and 'hard to manage' .

Just wondering whether people here have strong views on this management system which you can articulate beyond the previously mentioned kind of comments. I get the impression that a lot of people who appear to detest the method most don't really have much/any experience of it. I may of course be wrong and as always welcome positive discussion if it improves what I do.

My situation is that I've been experimenting with some brood and half dadants and have seen some benefits without finding the system difficult but I believe that may be due to a subtle (and very basic) difference in the mindset that I've approached it with and the approach which some others may feel is necessary. More later....if there's enough participation to warrant it.

[Dark Bee]

Prakel, I too have read those comments and athough it is for the individual to decide what system / hive to use and it would be very wrong to dictate to another what to use, some of the comments have been unjustifiably scathing. What works for one may not work for another because of so many variables. I use box and a half, as do many beekeepers here - I keep AMM. The method has served me well for years and there are no plans to change. If I may say so; one and a half dadants seem to be a trifle roomy - especially if the bees are native types. Will be happy to discuss further if you wish.

[GRIZZLY]

Prakel, brood and a half is only complicated if the bees decide to swarm and leave Q cells on the botton of the super. You then have to search thro 2 boxes to find her majesty .Add to that the complication of attempting Pagden swarm control. If your bees need so much room - better to use a 16 x 10 b.box or a 14 x 12 deep national. Simple single brood box system.

[Dark Bee]

Prakel, brood and a half is only complicated if the bees decide to swarm and leave Q cells on the botton of the super. You then have to search thro 2 boxes to find her majesty .Add to that the complication of attempting Pagden swarm control. If your bees need so much room - better to use a 16 x 10 b.box or a 14 x 12 deep national. Simple single brood box system.

May I ask what experience you have of using one and a half boxes? I stress i'm not attempting to be confrontational - just interested.

[Trog]

We tried brood and a half years ago but didn't find it helpful. We have had one colony here which has needed and been happy on double brood (with all the extra work that two boxes entail but for this lot is was necessary). We sometimes winter a large colony on brood and a half but always reconfine them to single brood box (supering up as necessary) in the spring. This is fine for our more AMM types (and all our bees are quite heavy on the AMM genes). I really don't believe the tales about just lifting the top box and all the queen cells will be easily seen between the two sets of frames. I have never found this to be the case as our bees seem to enjoy hiding qcs in holes at the sides of frames about halfway up! The other potential problem with a choice of two boxes to find the queen in is the possibility that you might just lose her if you handle the top box clumsily when moving it to examine the bottom box, or when putting the top box back on. With a single brood box she's always in the bottom bit which, apart from when changing floors, stays put!

[Neils]

I did try double brood/brood and half when I first started out and didn't personally like either method that much hence going to 14x12. We do have a couple of people in our association who are advocates of it as they find double brood too much to deal with, commercials or 14x12s too heave and a single brood doesn't give enough space so for them it's a compromise that works giving a lighter top box (the super) than traditional double brood nationals while still giving some of the advantages that double brood systems confer. All of them accept that the use of two different frame sizes does add a little more complication as a trade off.

[prakel]

Thanks for some good posts. It's still early days for me on this subject so it's interesting to see what other people with the experience think.

I will come back with more detailed replies later but for now should mention that my experiments with the 'half' have less to do with making the brood chamber bigger than offering the bees a different spatial option. I started by removing one (even two) outside brood combs and adding dummies as I felt they were probably not going to be required. This year I'll probably put them back in on the grounds that the space may as well be filled with comb as with wood.

My initial thinking was on the lines of watching to see how the colonies adjusted to the extra area. Without fail they all moved into it very quickly. Now, I may be very wrong here (I've laboured under quite a few wrong ideas and misjudgements since first getting my own bees) but I have a feeling that a colony which appears to be comfortable in a single box may still actually feel restricted if they're forced to lay across the combs horizontally when infact by choice at certain times during build up they'd prefer to elongate their nest in the vertical plain. Right or wrong, that's basically where I'm coming from.

[Black Comb]

Thanks for some good posts. It's still early days for me on this subject so it's interesting to see what other people with the experience think.

I will come back with more detailed replies later but for now should mention that my experiments with the 'half' have less to do with making the brood chamber bigger than offering the bees a different spatial option. I started by removing one (even two) outside brood combs and adding dummies as I felt they were probably not going to be required. This year I'll probably put them back in on the grounds that the space may as well be filled with comb as with wood.

My initial thinking was on the lines of watching to see how the colonies adjusted to the extra area. Without fail they all moved into it very quickly. Now, I may be very wrong here (I've laboured under quite a few wrong ideas and misjudgements since first getting my own bees) but I have a feeling that a colony which appears to be comfortable in a single box may still actually feel restricted if they're forced to lay across the combs horizontally when infact by choice at certain times during build up they'd prefer to elongate their nest in the vertical plain. Right or wrong, that's basically where I'm coming from.

Isn't this what Ian Craig advocates? He winters on 8 over 8 double brood, expanding them in the summer. Not exactly brood and a half but vertical so to speak. All from memory, but I'm sure this is in his "My Beekeeping Year". I tried brood and a half when I first started but didn't like it (nor double brood) so switched to a larger single brood chamber.

[Jimbo]

Ian's method is available from the SBA web site titled My Beekeeping Year. He describes his double brood method but also at certain times of the year reduces to single brood.

[GRIZZLY]

May I ask what experience you have of using one and a half boxes? I stress i'm not attempting to be confrontational - just interested.

Dark bee in 40 years of beekeeping I have tried pretty well everything. Before I came up here to Scotland I used to run 16 x 10's .To deliberately choose to complicate colony handling is not in my book. I believe in keeping it simple. I have run to brood and a half in the dim and distant past but found it too complicated. Ian Craig uses double brood which is o.k. as all his frames in his brood nests are of the same size. Same goes for the Rose system - all the frames are completely interchangeable from box to box , again not complicated.

[Black Comb]

What do you use now Grizzly?

[Neils]

Now, I may be very wrong here (I've laboured under quite a few wrong ideas and misjudgements since first getting my own bees) but I have a feeling that a colony which appears to be comfortable in a single box may still actually feel restricted if they're forced to lay across the combs horizontally when infact by choice at certain times during build up they'd prefer to elongate their nest in the vertical plain. Right or wrong, that's basically where I'm coming from.

I don't disagree with you regarding preference for bees going vertically, indeed, it's one of things I like about the 14x12 over the commercial or langstroth boxes. I don't think it's entirely co-incidental that the vast majority of box hives don't go much wider than 10-12 frames horizontally and it's one of the frequent criticisms raised against KTBH and Dartington boxes for that matter, especially in our climate, that even with oodles of spare space horizontally it's quite rare to get a colony that will make use of that all that space where they will quite happily fill a much larger space vertically.

I think I'd personally not be too inclined to be pulling out frames in favour of [insulated] Dummy boards over comb as it's never seemed to bother them that much nor have any of mine ever shown much resistance to utilising the full 11 frames when in place.

[prakel]

I think I'd personally not be too inclined to be pulling out frames in favour of [insulated] Dummy boards over comb as it's never seemed to bother them that much nor have any of mine ever shown much resistance to utilising the full 11 frames when in place.

Insulated dummy? .... not quite what I'm using! But, totally agree, it seems a waste of hive space not to fill it with comb. I was probably over thinking things (in the wrong direction) when I pulled the combs but I've had all winter to rethink. As you rightly point out they'll make use of it. There's also the benefit of spare drawn comb to pull for nucs.

[prakel]

Thanks to Black Comb and Jimbo for directing me to Ian Craig's 'My Beekeeping Year' -still working my way through it but I was hooked the moment that I read that he inspects from a kneeling position. I'll come back to Mr.Craig once I've finished the article but do think that someone who knows how to link pdfs should put it in the 'favourite links' sub forum.

[drumgerry]

Ian is quite a tall chap Prakel so maybe kneeling works for him! It wouldn't for me at 5'9!

[mbc]

I have a feeling that a colony which appears to be comfortable in a single box may still actually feel restricted if they're forced to lay across the combs horizontally when infact by choice at certain times during build up they'd prefer to elongate their nest in the vertical plain. Right or wrong, that's basically where I'm coming from.

I quite often run my bees on unrestricted nests, all in national size boxes, and what tends to happen is that they will build their nest upwards, through two or even three national boxes, but the lower one where the original nest was becomes very sparsely populated. This isnt necessarily a bad thing, as it leaves the bottom box ideal for an artificial swarm to go in to as most of the brood has left the bottom box and gone upwards by the time I, or the bees, decide its time for making increase.
This idea of keeping the nest nice and neat and compact is purely for the beekeepers convenience rather than for the bees sake.

[Black Comb]

Oddly in my jumbo langstroths they never use the full vertical area of each frame.
There is always a substantial honey arc then pollen arc before the brood. I know this is normal in most boxes but the honey arc in particular is relatively large.
I've inspected many nationals at the association and they often laid up complete frames with brood.
The benefit of these large boxes is that often I only run 8 frames, 9 max as this gives approx. 72k cells which Clive de Bruyn says is ideal. V. similar to 14 x 12.

[The Drone Ranger]

when I was doing a spot of reading about the Glenn Hive one thing that kept popping up was the practice of brood spreading.
You might imagine in a great big hive there would be plenty room but what apparently would happen is the bees would sort of brick themselves in to a central section of the hive
This led to swarming unless the food and pollen combs were moved outward allowing more empty combs to be brought into the brood nest area
Big might not always be best but tall seems better than wide if the bees are prolific

[Dark Bee]

Dark bee in 40 years of beekeeping I have tried pretty well everything. Before I came up here to Scotland I used to run 16 x 10's .To deliberately choose to complicate colony handling is not in my book. I believe in keeping it simple. I have run to brood and a half in the dim and distant past but found it too complicated. Ian Craig uses double brood which is o.k. as all his frames in his brood nests are of the same size. Same goes for the Rose system - all the frames are completely interchangeable from box to box , again not complicated.

Thanks for reply Grizzly, Ian Craig's article is good and well worth reading. Double brood boxes certainly have the advantage of interchangability of frames, but a double standard is perhaps too large - note Ian C. reduces the size and also when appropiate reverts to one box. The Rose boxes were used by Ron Brown decades ago and failed to become popular. My caveat with that system is if one box be removed because of excessive space or for any reason, the remaining box will be too small. The one and a half is not a perfect system, but has stood the test of time. I can recall it being in use over fifty years ago when national hives had doublewalled sides! Being used to it I find it to be versatile and it suits me. But it is for the individual to decide what system he wishes to use and familiarity and perhaps necessity can be decisive factors.

May yer lungs reek
and yer supers creek this Summer:o

[prakel]

Thanks for the replies so far.

The Ian Craig article is a nice overview of his management scheme, quite enjoyed reading it.

One point about the half which comes to mind reading some of the posts here is that it's too small for my bees to abandon brood rearing in the bottom box -at least, that was so last Summer so both boxes were occupied (brood) for a large part of the season to a greater or lesser extent. If I was using one size box I think that I'd probably be tempted by mbc's approach but I'm not sure it would be helpful (to me) to have the brood nest move away from the deep frames in my current set up.

When I started adding the shallow boxes I did so with the mindset of a single box user. The concern about inability to switch frames between boxes didn't bother me -you can't switch frames if you've only got one box so why feel the need to do so just because you've allowed the bees to extend into another box at some point? I appreciate that more efficient beekeepers will have good reasons for moving brood combs around as a part of their usual management scheme but I'm not sure that it's something I would be interested in adopting.

This started as an idea about nest configuration and is still very much open to tweaking, here, I'm just trying to get some other perspectives -as George Imirie wrote in one of the 'Pink Pages' (well worth a read):

"Does years of experience make one more knowledgeable about beekeeping? NO! Only reading, attending meetings, studying, and LEARNING improves your knowledge".

[Dark Bee]

QUOTE=Neils;17822]I don't disagree with you regarding preference for bees going vertically, indeed, it's one of things I like about the 14x12 over the commercial or langstroth boxes. I don't think it's entirely co-incidental that the vast majority of box hives don't go much wider than 10-12 frames horizontally and it's one of the frequent criticisms raised against KTBH and Dartington boxes for that matter, especially in our climate, that even with oodles of spare space horizontally it's quite rare to get a colony that will make use of that all that space where they will quite happily fill a much larger space vertically.

Quite right, in the days of old when knights were bold and feral colonies built combs in roof spaces, they had a penchant for building vertically and not often was there more than ten combs in width. The height/length of the combs might well be a couple of feet, this was in areas where there was unlimited space for comb building in any direction.
Another fact which I always found interesting was the bees in attic spaces often abandoned their old combs and built anew nearby. Waxmoth dealt with the old combs and I often thought the whole process was a precedent for shook swarming/Bailey frame change. :rolleyes: