Going to all Mediums here with that suggest locate Queen relocate her to Medium above her current Deep Brood Chamber; placing an excluder between the Deep and Medium boxes? Once all brood in Deep emerge retire the Deep equipment? Thanks
I need to do the same thing. I just order new 8 frames med and I'm going to paint them and do the same thing before wintering the hives. Good luck let me know how it goes.
I am not sure what you are saying.....but if what you are saying is : "If I wish to move to all mediums and currently have a deep brood chamber, what is the best way to do it, put a queen excluder between the deep and the medium, allow enough time for all brood to hatch and shake them into the medium, and then just simply retire the deep after I empty it?" then I would say ya, thats a ok plan, I suppose. though the bees will backfill the deep with honey.
I would cut one or two of the deep brood combs to fit mediums and tie them in. Then confine the queen with those. Otherwise, I have seen a queen abandoned when doing what you propose.
I was planning on starting with all mediums. I also wanted locally raised bees that can survive my winters so I bought nucs instead of packaged bees. The nuc were on deep frames and when I picked them up, I had to transfer the frames to my own boxes. So I bought a couple deeps and after trying to plan it out on how to transfer them to all medium without setting them back. I decided to keep the single deep and let them expand the brood nest to mediums. My goal is to have the deep and two mediums as brood boxes going into winter. Next spring, while the bees are in the top boxes, I'll remove the deep.
Quote from: Michael Bush on July 02, 2013, 09:37:59 AM
I would cut one or two of the deep brood combs to fit mediums and tie them in. Then confine the queen with those. Otherwise, I have seen a queen abandoned when doing what you propose.
Yes, it easy to cut and nail a new lower wood there.
One semiprofessional guy sawed all his Langstroths to medium last winter. He cutted boxes too
-.
Quote from: Michael Bush on July 02, 2013, 09:37:59 AM
I would cut one or two of the deep brood combs to fit mediums and tie them in. Then confine the queen with those. Otherwise, I have seen a queen abandoned when doing what you propose.
hmm...actually you know I should of thought of it a bit more before answering. you of course are right, putting a queen into a empty medium and just expecting them to leave the brood and follow her up and start anew can have problems. thanks for the catch on my semi-bad advice. I was probably thrown off trying to decipher specifically what he meant. I'd keep the deep personally and just put the medium on top, then after the medium is stable and solid, maybe even next spring rotate the deep out, if I wanted. (I'd actually still keep the deep but I like deeps and jumbo's compared to mediums for brood. I like having more space for them to move in the micro climate before crossing a box boundary I guess and more space for laying on a frame. and natural hives are often way longer.)