Brood box and a half

[alancooper]

I over-wintered a couple of hives with a super (ie, a "half-box") under a brood box (National). In mid-April I moved the half-box to the top of the brood box. Both hives have a brood box with 8 frames of brood and a lot of stores. In one hive there is brood on one of the half-box frames and a super (added in early May) is filling. In the second hive there is brood on 8 brood-box frames but none in the half-brood box - the super is not filling. Both hives are crowded and have young queens. They have no queen cells yet but seem good candidates for early swarming.

I can not find much to read on keeping bees on brood and a half. Can anyone offer advice?
Alan.

[alancooper]

Found an article on "Keeping bees on a brood and a half" by Willy Shaw of Anglesey BKA. Management seems quite complicated - but a double National hive (which I am also trying this year) is very heavy to manipulate. Looking down between frames and between the two boxes for Q cells is not ideal.

[prakel]

Found an article on "Keeping bees on a brood and a half" by Willy Shaw of Anglesey BKA. Management seems quite complicated

Not had time to read how he does it, yet, so this reply is a little blind. However, I see no reason why brood and a half needs to be complicated.

I look on it as two boxes of bees, it doesn't bother me that the frames aren't properly interchangeable between the boxes (which is the 'problem' which is often put forward by people who want to tell others how not to do things) because if I was only using one deep as a brood (as I often do) I wouldn't be moving the frames elewhere in the hive so I see no necessity to do so just because there's an extra brood box added.

Something I've mentioned in the past is the subject of overwintering a few colonies with a shallow on top (no excluder) as a way of getting them set up for early season splits which we can give overwintered queens to.

It also gives a little extra head height for the nest without adding a second deep (we're using standard md broods and/or our own bs style broods which hold 13 frames). The thing is, they'll happily use a second deep but neither of our hive types need it -there're only so many eggs a queen can lay over a brood cycle. It's just a case of where she lays them; one example personal to us is if we put a shallow on top of one of our bs boxes it'll usually result in the back three bs combs being backfilled early on but if we don't add the shalllow then there's going to be brood in at least two of those three combs at the height of the build up and there won't be any backfilling untill we're into July.

Don't have any hard and fast rules here -I used to, but I was almost always wrong so now I just have a framework approach which can be added to or taken away from as the situation dictates.

One tip: a good way to get a feel for what your bees need is to run a couple of colonies on all shallow boxes without any excluders for a year or two and watch the way they lay out and contract through the season. It's an easy, uniform way to find out exactly what use they make of their home and how much brood space they genuinely need.

[Adam]

Brood and a half is simply giving the queen more space to lay in. I don't like brood and a half myself but if you don't want or can't lift a brood box easily it does mean that you can have a larger brood area and only have a super box to lift off to complete an inspection rather than a full-sized brood box if you go to double brood. You need to check each frame for queecells - peering down between them is unlikely to find them. If you are fairly confident that the bees are not going to swarm, you can tilt up the top brood box and look for queencells at the bottom of those frames - again not guaranteed to find every possible queencell but better than peering down and quick.

[alancooper]

Adam,
Since my last post I have read that Ted Hooper in "Guide to Bees and Honey" considers brood and a half to be a "messy system not to be recommended". I do not yet have an opinion, because this is my first year trying it.
This year for the first time, I am also trying a double brood deep national brood box, guided by Ian Craig's excellent "My Beekeeping Year". This system is not advocated in Fermanagh, I think because we are climatically marginal for beekeeping. So far, my local black bees with second year productive Qs have used the second box but not a lot - and I have converted it into a Ben Harden set-up for grafting (40% sealed Q cells).
Prakel,
Your "little extra head height for the nest without adding a second deep" was my main reason for trying brood and a half and your "framework approach" is attractive.
Thanks, Alan.

[Neils]

Work with your bees and with a system that works for you, only way to figure that out is to try a few :).

I went with Deep Nationals (14x12) which I think is preferable to brood and a half but not as flexible as Double Nationals. Currently, lugging a full 14x12 around isn't too much hassle for me and I like the relative simplicity but I've definitely found at times that 1 14x12 isn't big enough, but double brooding with them is far too much and going all 14x12 isn't an option as so few [affordable] extractors will take a deep national frame and I'm not sure my back would cope with it.

Fortunately most of my hives are converted nationals which makes switching back relatively straight forward and I'd suggest that the same is true of trying brood and half, if you don't like it you've 'wasted' a tenner or so per hive in frames and foundation to try it out.

[Lancs Lad]

I converted 12 hives last August to the Ian Craig way of 8 frames over 8 frames using dummy boards which gives you brood and a half, this summer I converted the remainder of my hives to this system. They all overwintered very well and manipulations are easy using the same frame size in both boxes. Have a look at My Beekeeping Year by Ian Craig. https://www.scottishbeekeepers.org.uk/learn/study-notes