Moving from brood and a half to 14x12.... What's best ?
I am getting a hive that is currently on brood and a half ... I want to move it onto 14x12. What's the best way ? shook swarm ?
or put the 14x12 box above the brood and a half until pulled out and then remove the brood and a half.
any advise welcome.
thanks
Moving from brood and a half to !4x12
Quote:
Originally Posted by
drdoug
I am getting a hive that is currently on brood and a half ... I want to move it onto 14x12. What's the best way ? shook swarm ?
or put the 14x12 box above the brood and a half until pulled out and then remove the brood and a half.
any advise welcome.
thanks
Don't do it! Stick to standard brood frames and double up then you have far more versatility and can manage all sorts of manipulations from the double brood box system. A prolific queen will need all the space, if not so prolific then you can reduce to 6-8 frames in each brood box and use dummy boards on either side. For wintering you have a safer option with plenty of headroom for the cluster to move upwards. If pushed for time during the swarming season you can simply split the boxes looking for tell tale signs of queen cells. 14x12 boxes are very heavy to lift and the frames are too unwieldy for many people to manipulate. There have been 2 or 3 people in our association gave them up as a bad job. I sometimes use brood boxes all the way through for simplicity.
Alvearium