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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: "birdcr AT concentric.net" <birdcr AT concentric.net>
  • To: NaturalBeesinNC AT yahoogroups.com, ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [ocba] Two Story Hives?
  • Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 21:05:49 -0500 (CDT)

Folks,
I am reading online "Fifty Years among Bees" by DR CC Miller, it
was written over 100 years ago about beekeeping in PA. You can
download a copy at the link below.

www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/.../030208miller/030408miller.PDF

Anyway my interest was peaked when I read these paragraphs about
two story hives (2 deeps of brood). I thought maybe some of you
might share some input on this?

ROOM FOR QUEEN.
up to the time of putting on supers the queen has had unlimited
room with the design of encouraging the rearing of as much brood
as possible. When the harvest begins, she may have as much as 6,
9, 11, even up to 14 frames well occupied with brood and eggs. A
good deal depends on the season,as well as the queen. At one time
I thought I ought to be able to make a success of continu- ing the
two stories of brood-frames throughout the har- vest. It seems
that when a colony is so strong as to have 12 or 14 frames of
brood, there ought to be no difficulty in having good super-work
done by putting the supers above the two stories ; and one season
of failure the only super I had filled was on a two-story colony.
But I was never able to have that thing repeated, and whatever
the
reason may be, I have not been able to make a success of putting
comb-honey supers on two-story colonies. Even if the two-story
plan would work all right it involves much extra lifting.
REDUCING TO ONE STORY.
So before putting on supers the colonies are reduced to one story
each. If a colony has 9,10,or more frames of brood, all but 8 are
taken away. The surplus frames of brood are given to those which
have less than 8 frames of brood each, the effort being to have in
each hive 8

frames well filled with brood when a super is given. The season
may be such that it will not be possible to have as many as 8
brood in each hive. A colony strong enough to have 6 frames well
filled with brood is likely to be in condition for good
super-work, but the work will be better if it has 7 or 8. On the
other hand the season and the early condition of the bees may be
such that when each •colony is brought up or down to its 8 frames
of brood, a
considerable surplus of brood may be left. DISPOSAL OF EXTRA
BROOD.
Circumstances will decide what shall be done with this extra
brood. It may be needed for building up nuclei, or for new
colonies. It may be piled up temporarily in piles of three, four,
or five stories each, to be used later in any manner desired. It
does not take three times as many bees to care for the brood in
three stories as it does to care for the brood in one story. If
two or three stories of brood with adhering bees are piled up, in
two or three
weeks there will be enough bees there so that when re- duced to
one story it will be all right for super-work. Or, it may be left
just as it is, and allowed to store in
combs for the next spring's use.

Mainly the reason this peaked my interest is from a big swarm I
hived around mid April. This hive has a deep (one story) and a
full super of honey ready to harvest. I added another deep (story)
today before reading this.

Cheers,
Randy Emmitt



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