I run with two deeps in my brood chambers. I have read that you should absolutely reverse them in the spring, because the bees work their way up. I have read that you should absolutely leave them alone, because the bees work their way down.
What are your opinions and why?
Thanks!
Grid.
leave them. through the winter they work up into the honey they have stored. through the spring they work their way back down so that they can store honey above for the next winter.
reversing does nothing other than slow them down and confuse them. IF you have a hive that does not move from one box to another, and that does happen sometimes, move a couple of frames of brood and nurse bees into the empty box. that is almost always enough to encourage movement. most of the time all they need is time to build up enough to want to move.
what you want to do is make sure that the queen has plenty of room to lay. shifting a few frames is effective and easy.
You'll get lots of opinions! :-D I reversed one hive, and the other I didn't. Main reason for me was the top deep was nectar bound, no room to lay and the bottom deep had plenty of space for Her Worship to lay, so I reversed.
Second hive, there was room and I had sweat enough that day so I didn't reverse. I was going too though.... but I ended up splitting that hive in the end since they were about to swarm.
...DOUG
KD4MOJ
Thank you both. Hopefully we'll get a few more. :)
I'm with kathyp on this one. What I seem to notice is that returning foragers will cap honey in the top which only leaves down for the queen to go if there is a flow on. If there isn't a flow the arrangement of the brood nest seems pretty much static. I suppose under certain circumstance they could get the bottom nectar bound and so they leave no room for the queen to move down to lay, but this implies that you have enough of a flow so that there should be supers on anyways. Even so as kathyp said moving a couple frames should be enough to alleviate the impasse. It doesn't strike me as helping anything by reversing. ie the flow is the same, the number and makeup of the foragers is the same. By reversing the beekeeper will see honey being stored in the top box and brood in the bottom, but we haven't actually accomplished anything but potentially confuse the colony a bit as kathyp said. Since I'm leaving the two deeps for them and the supers are for me I really don't care what they do in which one as long as they end up properly configured before winter hits. Just my somewhat less then 2 cents. :)
Anytime someone says you should "absolutely" do a maneuver on all hives, they are telling you they don't know doodly about keeping bees.
Each circumstance calls for it's own action. You have to learn to read the signs.
PS. As Kathy hinted, manipulating frames most times will do much more good than moving boxes.
I think that much depends upon your location and your bees. While I am still a relatively new beekeeper (on my 4th summer) I have come to the opinion that 'all beekeeping is local'! In most cases, you will get a ton of (conflicting) advice and will just have to figure out what works best in Ontario.
Another thing that I have learned reading this forum (and others) is that any strategy that works for one beekeeper in one part of the country - can fail miserably for another beekeeper somewhere else (and it doesn't necessarily have to be that far away). The differing opinions on whether or not to leave screened bottoms open over winter is a classic example.
That said, I have found that when I ask questions on the forum, the answers that generally work best for me come from the successful beekeepers in the northeast (I have no idea why) - often Michael Palmer and/or Mike Bjorn - or from the successful beekeepers in the Pacific northwest. Typically, most southern management strategies don't work as well up here in the Dakotas.
With respect to reversing hive bodies - Michael Palmer recommends NOT reversing until the beginning of your first major flow - reverse them at the beginning of the flow. Until then, he recommends supering the hives in order to give the queen room to lay and prevent swarming.
That is the strategy I am currently employing this year - we will see how it goes. Although, after reading KathyP's post, I may try simply moving frames around in one of my hives!
So there you have it - more conflicting advice! If you have more than one hive, try a couple of different strategies and see what works best.
Mike
Thanks everyone. Given the conflicting opinions and my lack of local info, I will err on the side of laziness and do nothing. The bees will let me know if I did the right thing or not, then next year, I will know what to do. :)
Well, did a shake out of my queenless hive, and left the queen-right hive's brood boxes alone. The brood chamber is firmly in the upper super, with a tiny bit of drone brood in the tops of the center frames of the lower super; the only drone brood in the box that I could see.
Time will tell if my queen will move down, or swarm first. :)
The concept that bees only work up is contrary to any common sense if you think about how bees live naturally. They move into a tree and draw comb from the top down (the only direction they can) and fill the top with honey. As the winter progresses they eat the honey and end up at the top where the queen starts to lay in the spring but they put honey at the top and keep forcing her back down until she is back at the bottom. How can they work up? They never work up, they only eat their way up.
In a hive you add empty space above them and being adaptable they work the empty space wherever they find it. So the illusion is that bees work up. Actually they work toward whatever space they find.
Thanks again all. Michael, that makes sense. I am leaving them be for now. I am not going to use excluders, so if the bees are still tight against the inner cover when the flow comes, I was thinking of reversing to give a box of comb between the brood and the honey supers. Make sense, or is that a silly thing to do?
Cheers
Grid.
The biggest advantage to reversing at the point where you are adding supers is that IF the bottom box is empty they may just keep moving up because that's where you added the space and putting the space above them puts it where you can see the space which makes it easier to judge when they need more room. but all in all I think it's just more work...
http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslazy.htm#stopswitching (http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslazy.htm#stopswitching)