Moving to 12 x14

I have a hive on a brood and a half, and a swarm I picked up last year and put them on two supers. I would like to put both on 12 x 14 brood boxes do I put the new brood box above or below the existing brood box or between the super and the brood box and when is the best time to do it?

Hi Moby, welcome to the forum.

There's been some useful discussion today on a similar thread- see here http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8891

However if you want to swap over completely, I would think a bailey change http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/baileychange.html or a shook swarm http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/shookswarm.html would be your routes of choice.

Decisions, decisions...

why not try a shook swarm, in April, put 6 new foundation 14x12 frames in a brood box so there is a large gap in the middle of the box, Heavily smoke the hive and then again in five minute then at 10 minutes

Find the queen in the old brood and place her and the frame of brood she is laying on in a nuc for safe keeping

shake all your old bees in the space in the new box and close up the old box and entrance, p then add four more 14x12 foundation frames, place the queen and her frame from the nuc into the middle of the 14x12 foundation frames and re-assemble the hive

feed for two of three weeks 1:1 syrup or until 9 of the ten frames are drawn

the queen frames being standard is smaller can act as a drone frame

if you want to add a QE under the new brood for 7 days to restrain the queen while the hive settles

and i forgot to add run like bl**dy hell they can be a bit annoyed

MuswellMetro said:

why not try a shook swarm, ............

shake all your old bees in the space in the new box and close up the old box and entrance, p then add four more 14x12 foundation frames, place the queen and her frame from the nuc into the middle of the 14x12 foundation frames and re-assemble the hive

feed for two of three weeks 1:1 syrup or until 9 of the ten frames are drawn
...................
if you want to add a QE under the new brood for 7 days to restrain the queen while the hive settles..............

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Advice from our local inspector is that the BBKA have been investigating the shook swarm method for disease control of EFB and varroa, they suggest capturing the queen and shaking all the bees onto a full set of foundation frames with a QX under then releasing the queen into the hive. They do not advocate transferring any brood as this does not break the varroa life cycle, using their method the only varroa present are those on the adult bees.

I appreciate the OP's intention is just to chance brood systems but if it can be used to reduce varroa at the same time without chemicals why not. You could always try the icing sugar thing too to reduce the varroa numbers further.

nonstandard said:

but if it can be used to reduce varroa at the same time without chemicals why not. You could always try the icing sugar thing too to reduce the varroa numbers further.

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in a perfect world i agree, your method reduces varroa, and means less contamination of the new comb

So my method is not 100% but i only transfer eggs and a small amount of brood NB: "and the frame of brood she is laying on" so limited varroa transfer as i do not transfer the majority of the brood

it is so much easier to transfer her on an egg frame rather than either damage her while shaking in or catching her ,boxing her up, shaking the bees and re introducing her after the shook swarm. She is also less likely to abscond or get balled if your scent gets on her

and if it is the first time you have done a shook swarm, my advice is try my method it is simpler and less can go wrong

One thing to bear in mind with a shook swarm is that you need a strong colony to begin with. With much less than 6+ frames, on both sides, of bees then you can really set them back.

I question it as a technique on otherwise healthy bees just for the loss of brood, it gets bandied around a lot as a catch all timesaver for lots of things, but from my own personal point of view I think it's a pretty drastic manipulation to inflict on a colony.

MuswellMetro said:

in a perfect world i agree, your method reduces varroa, and means less contamination of the new comb.....

and if it is the first time you have done a shook swarm, my advice is try my method it is simpler and less can go wrong

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MM I agree, I just wanted to give an alternative, personally if varroa is not an issue I would go for the Bailey change which should ensure maximum productivity.

Oh and I missed a typo in my last post it should have read, 'change brood systems' not 'chance brood systems'.

Nellie said:

One thing to bear in mind with a shook swarm is that you need a strong colony to begin with. With much less than 6+ frames, on both sides, of bees then you can really set them back.

I question it as a technique on otherwise healthy bees just for the loss of brood, it gets bandied around a lot as a catch all timesaver for lots of things, but from my own personal point of view I think it's a pretty drastic manipulation to inflict on a colony.

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Nellie , i agree, must be strong, but they do rebound back very strong in my experience Size though must be big and that is also the same with a bailley change which i would only do on over 7 or 8 frames of brood

so if a small colony i would just push the old frames out over the year by the first replacing and stores and one put in the brood area then adding one frame every two weeks( ish) as brood emerges, ok you get wild comb under the standard frames but that just more wax for the pot, it is similar to what is suggest to beginners puting a standard frame nuc into a 14x12

Nellie said:

One thing to bear in mind with a shook swarm is that you need a strong colony to begin with. With much less than 6+ frames, on both sides, of bees then you can really set them back.

I question it as a technique on otherwise healthy bees just for the loss of brood, it gets bandied around a lot as a catch all timesaver for lots of things, but from my own personal point of view I think it's a pretty drastic manipulation to inflict on a colony.

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Some small swarms I've collected have gone into a 5 frame nuc of BS National frames and drawn all five frames out in a week. Provided you feed after the shook swarm they will recover quickly and will be very motivated to drawn out the frames quickly so they can begin storing pollen, nectar and give the queen space to lay.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqFMKIoF0ls"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqFMKIoF0ls[/ame]

If you start watching from 1:10sec notice how inactive they appear, turned out they were starving so on 14th June I fed them 4 pints of 1:1 sugar water over 2 days. Not every swarm leaves the parent colony full of honey.

Note the noise levels as they were excited to be fed, 4 days on they had constructed 4 combs of roughly the same size. These combs combined would be about the same amount of work to party draw out 4 National frames. A week later on the 26th June see the differance now, the same 5 combs are all roughly the same size. Also bear in mind this is a top bar hive so no foundation to work from so the amount of wax produced to build each comb is alot more than would be needed to draw out 5 BS National frames.

Shook swarming is not drastic to a colony. If any thing I believe it focuses them into working hard and its an excellent method of pest control and just as importantly disease control. In terms of colony size of course it will knock them back 3-4 weeks but if the shook swarm removes over 95% of varroa and any disease this is a price worth paying long term.

It depends on what you mean by drastic and what your intentions are for that colony I suppose. A large colony, shook swarmed can bounce back stronger and get you a bigger honey harvest as they've no brood to worry about and have the numbers to "blast through" the broodless period. And by strong I mean strong.

A small colony, especially at the start of the year, can struggle, there just aren't the number of bees needed to weather that broodless period and so while they might be going great guns, relatively speaking, there's still the period between them drawing out the frames, them being laid up and the brood emerging during which the colony is getting smaller. A 6 frame colony can well end up down to 2-3 frames of bees before it starts to bounce back.

With a swarm it doesn't matter, you accept that depend on when you get it they're going to be building up first and anything you get off them will be a bonus. but if you've got an otherwise established colony, you can simply end up knocking them back to being in a similar position and instead of expecting any honey off them you're just waiting for them to build up.

Shook swarming has its place for sure, I just feel that it gets flung around as a no cost, time saving alternative without the potential downsides of it ever being pointed out. If it's a case of taking an existing colony and just using it to transfer from one type of hive to another, let them build up first is all I'm saying.

Thank you for all your advice, both hives were given the thumbs up by the bee inspector last year, and both were treated with oa at the start of Jan so touch wood varroa not really a problem.

I think a shook swarm might be a bit excessive so I may opt for the Baily change.

Thanks again

Moby

A Bailey is what I plan to do. This will be my first spring and I don't think I'm brave enough to do a shook swarm. I found this, look on page 4. It's slightly different than putting a whole box of foundation on top.

Erichalfbee said:

A Bailey is what I plan to do. This will be my first spring and I don't think I'm brave enough to do a shook swarm. I found this, look on page 4. It's slightly different than putting a whole box of foundation on top.

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Intrestingly in that article they suggest that the Bailey isn't suitable "for districts which rely on very early flows such as OSR"

Erica,
Shake one and donate the brood to the other two, which particularly if it is mainly emerging brood will be bolstered.

You will then have wasted nothing and have the benefit of seeing how well a shook swarm can perform. Don't forget to feed them though.

Hombre said:

Erica,
Shake one and donate the brood to the other two, which particularly if it is mainly emerging brood will be bolstered.

You will then have wasted nothing and have the benefit of seeing how well a shook swarm can perform. Don't forget to feed them though.

Click to expand...

Thanks Hombre and MM
Much to think about. I'll put all these plans on paper and make a decision. Now where are Rooftops new poly 14x12s?

Can I resurrect this?
I spoke to my mentor and she thinks that a shook swarm is fairly drastic for the short season we have here in cold rainy Cumbria.
She suggests taking a little honey at the end of May and using the June Gap to do a Bailey; little food around and little for the bees to do but hopefully it stays warm....er
Any ideas?

Erichalfbee said:

Can I resurrect this?
I spoke to my mentor and she thinks that a shook swarm is fairly drastic for the short season we have here in cold rainy Cumbria.
She suggests taking a little honey at the end of May and using the June Gap to do a Bailey; little food around and little for the bees to do but hopefully it stays warm....er
Any ideas?

Click to expand...

Mind you by then you will be nearing the end of the swarming season so may have had to do an artificial swarm - which you could also use as a means of swapping brood box size if that is the intention

Your mentor thinks a shook swarm to be a bit drastic.

Shaking the complete colony, making sure to put a queen excluder underneath the new box of foundation for a week while they get themselves established so that they don't abscond.

Feed them well with 1:1 syrup and patty. There is no brood to feed, so the whole workforce is available to draw fresh wax, which if you keep up the feeding will be done in relatively short order - the colony will bounce back like an express train and be competing with the best of them in six to eight weeks time.


The lemongrass oil makes it sooooo delicious to the bees. Spoon it into fairy cake cups so that it doesn't run and use more cups rather than overfilling. the patty is good for beefing up bees for feeding duties as a pollen substitute.

Holland & Barratt can supply the brewers yeast powder £5, the soya flour £1.50 and the lemongrass oil £5 (all prices approximate, but very close). The wife can make merrengue with the egg whites, just before she kills you for stealing the eggs.

Thank you Hivemaker for the original recipe and the lemongrass oil tip.

All you have to remember is that brewers yeast is good for elements but is strong, so there is about three times as much soya flour in the mix. Sugar as another method of providing energy and honey to make it attractive, although as I have said the lemongrass oil is the main attractant. You don't need to be too prescriptive with the recipe. I fed 1 litre of the stuff to my eleven colonies at the weekend, their second portion and had previously used greaseproof paper instead of baking cups. Not a sign of paper or patty remained after a week, except in the weakest of the colonies which still had both some patty and paper left.

You don't have to believe me, just keep guessing and wondering if it might have worked for you. If in doubt PM Chris B and ask his advice re shook swarms and how they bounce back, in his experience.

Last year I shook one of my colonies as I had advised and co-incidentally it was the one that provided most of my honey crop from the supers. The second colony was significantly behind and the others had all been split to nucs for expansion and swarm control.

It was pulling in honey great guns but decided it was time to swarm in the first week of July, so don't think that you have necessarily stopped them swarming - they are Carniolans after all.

I have three apiaries.
At each, one colony - the largest - will be shaken and the brood distributed among the two remaining colonies.

In the Garden two spare colonies have been earmarked for limited queen rearing duties and will be handled differently - you guessed it I have a plan but not the timing yet.

The time for shaking will be such that there is not too much brood for two colonies to be able to handle without being stretched. I will be watching the weather too.

I am not dependent upon OSR for a spring crop, that might need to be a consideration for others.