Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Spreading the brood
The first method helps a colony that is headed by a good queen and that is disease
free to build up more rapidly. This is achieved by spreading the brood. It is, however, a
labour-intensive method and should be repeated several times. It isn't, therefore, used
by commercial beekeepers with many hives but, if you have a few hives only, it is a
worthwhile practice.
The procedure is as follows (see Figure 20):
Move the whole brood area to one side.
To protect this from cold, place a comb of stores between it and the side wall (this
may not be necessary in warm areas).
Find the comb with the most sealed brood (comb 4 in Figure 20 (a)).
Place it to the right of comb 7 (the last comb of brood in Figure 20 (a)). This
induces the queen to move to comb 6 (was comb 7), in which she will lay because
this comb is in between two brood combs and is warmer (see Figure 20 (b)).
Some 7-10 days later, make another such shift (see Figure 20 (c) and (d)).
Continue until you see a large, even brood pattern.
The main advantage of this method is that you are moving frames within the hive and
so there is no danger of disease being introduced from another hive. Also, the brood
chamber tends to expand in one direction, making it easier to assess.
While this is a simple and effective way to build up your colony, you should never
transfer a frame of brood over an empty frame: chilled and dead brood may be the
result. If you take care not to do this, you should see good results.
Using two queens
The second method of helping to increase your harvest is to use two queens in one
hive. Experience among large-scale commercial beekeepers has shown that two queen
colonies consistently produce better honey yields than single queen colonies. Obviously
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