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.