4 Mediums?

[charlotte]

Hello All!
This is going to be my first year beekeeping...I live in WI where the winter's can be long & hard.  I am planning on using all mediums, 4 meds for brood boxes.  My theory here is maybe 3 meds would not be enough for winter, if it's an especially bad one(equiv. of 2 deep).. and  4 meds would be less than the equiv. of 3 deep, which in my research seems to actually be counter-productive.  I am thinking the 4 mediums would maybe be a "happy medium" ha ha.

So my question is...anybody out there use 4 med for overwinter?? How does it work out??

My hope is that come spring, I can split one med off for a nuc & raise some queens, then re-combine in early fall to total 4 meds again for overwinter.

Any and all thoughts are appreciated.  :)

[Sean Kelly]

Charlotte,

Experimenting is half the fun of keeping bees!  This year I experimented with over-wintering with 3 deeps since I lost 3 hives last late spring due to a weird random cold snap.  I got less honey this year due to this but my bees have tons of honey still.  Come spring time they should be really strong and hopefully I will be able to split them to recover my losses last season.

Give it a try!

Sean Kelly

[gmcharlie]

I wouldn't try it in Wis.  the reason for the deep bodies over teh supers is to allow the winter cluster to not be broken up by the space between the boxes.   given wisconsions climate in the winter, your cluster would be verry small and not mobile at all.  ( I realize 3 inches doesn't sound like much but  it can be teh difference between life and death to a cluster.
I live in SI  and I still use deeps  instead of supers even though my climate is much more forgiving.   much easier to err on the side of caution.     

Also,  your brood patterns will be smaller because the queen will not move up and down in the boxes a lot.  if your set on it I would cut the  supers down about 1/4 to help close the gap.  but keep in mind your still loosind that space that the top and bottom of the next frame occupies. 

[Brian D. Bray]

Hello All!
This is going to be my first year beekeeping...I live in WI where the winter's can be long & hard.  I am planning on using all mediums, 4 meds for brood boxes.  My theory here is maybe 3 meds would not be enough for winter, if it's an especially bad one(equiv. of 2 deep).. and  4 meds would be less than the equiv. of 3 deep, which in my research seems to actually be counter-productive.  I am thinking the 4 mediums would maybe be a "happy medium" ha ha.

So my question is...anybody out there use 4 med for overwinter?? How does it work out??

I overwintered, successfully, with 3 mediums, but 4 mediums is more a kin to 2 deeps so since you are in the Freezing cold of the Northern Mid-West 4 medium supers will work fine, that is what Michael Bush in Nebraska uses.  I plan on using 4 mediums next year myself but settled on 3 mediums after I had over 1/2 my bees die of starvation during a cold snap during the tranditional spring buildup period here.  So After nurseing the 2 surving hives all summer I got back to 3 mediums so that what I wintered them in.

My hope is that come spring, I can split one med off for a nuc & raise some queens, then re-combine in early fall to total 4 meds again for overwinter.

If I understand this comment correctly, you want to split you 3 medium hive into 2 hives for the summer and then recombine in the fall?  I'd just keep the split and over winter the old hive with 4 mediums and the split with 3-4, whichever they build up to.  To split just wait until one or more supers have eggs in them and then pull enough frames to make a single story hive taking care to locate the queen and providing enough brood to the split so they can build a new queen.  The benefit of 2 hives is that you can use one or both the nurse a failing hive back to health like I had to do last summer, switching frames back and forth to keep the development of the hives relatively balanced and as strong as possible at the same time.

Any and all thoughts are appreciated.  :)

De Nada, You'll always get answers here but none of them may be the answer you were hopping for.  Then again, it might be just the thing to fix your ills.

[charlotte]

Thank you everyone- definatly food for thought! ;)

Brian- What I was thinking re the split-
  Start out in spring with 4 mediums, then split off only one med to use as a nuc & raise queens/"extra resource hive" Then recombine this single med, toward fall, with my now 3 mediums, to overwinter back to 4 meds again. I'm hoping that by pulling off one med with some brood, food & obviously not the queen, will alleviate congestion in the brood box, force the single med to make a nice new queen & serve as a resource hive.  I realize that a single med will probably not make it over winter, so my thought is to recombine it back with the original hive, (which is at 3 meds) pinch off the old queen, and have a nice new queen from the nuc/ single med going into winter.( now back to 4 meds ) Also will give me a chance to see the brood pattern first & use a double screen board to hopefully not have a queen rejection issue.
  ( I know that I think way too much about things sometimes & I realize trial & error will occur, but if you can avoid the error in the first place..why not?! )

What do you think??
Thank you!!! :-D

[iddee]

By removing the one super, you will not relieve the congestion. Add a fourth super when making the split. Then add supers to the split until fall. Hopefully, you will be back to 4 on it, too. At least three, which has a very good chance of making it through the winter. You must give them more supers for the honey flow, or they will swarm.

[Brian D. Bray]

Now I get where you're coming from.  But that hive with the 2 remaining mediums will build up past 4 mediums on their own.  So the only Plus side to what you are doing is spliting for swarm prevention and fall requeening.  The plan still needs to have Swarm management practices in use such as the split with the old queen going to the new hive (kinda ruins the fall requeening), keeping the brood box open by putting empty frames into to them every few weeks, and timelyh supering using the 70/30 determining method.  The original hive will build back to 4 boxes rather quickly and even give a surplus and the split will build up also. 

I just don't see where you are ahead by joing the 2 hive back together in the fall.  Both hives will be 3-4 mediums by that time, most likely have sufficient stores, and 2 hives are better than 1.  The only upside I can see, and you essentially destroyed one hive to do it, was increased honey production of about 50 lbs.  2 hives gives you more options as I explained earlier.

I would do the split, take a smaller harvest, and then go for a larger harvest the 3rd year.  The 3rd year you can steal frames from both established hives to make another split, while opening up the 2 hives brood chambers, and then you'll have the 2 strong hives and  becaise up only have to borrow 2-3 frames from each hive leaving them stronger and you also get a good harvest with a 3rd hive built up to 3-4 deeps for overwintering. 

[charlotte]

OK- So this is probably a dumb question- but how do you relieve congestion, aside from switching top to bottom brood boxes, with out always ending up with new hives. I'm all for having a few more hives, but if you split them all the time, you could end up with lots of hives..which is also lots of honey, but also more money invested & more work too. 

I was planning on only pulling One med off the stack of 4 to use as a nuc. Take the extra surplus honey off. Recombine it so as to not make another hive. (I actually am starting with two hives, and have enough stuff to make 3, but them what? I don't really want to go beyond the two, so that the 3rd set up will be my "extra."

Thank you!!
I love hearing everyone's thoughts on the subject  :-D

[Brian D. Bray]

OK- So this is probably a dumb question- but how do you relieve congestion, aside from switching top to bottom brood boxes, with out always ending up with new hives. I'm all for having a few more hives, but if you split them all the time, you could end up with lots of hives..which is also lots of honey, but also more money invested & more work too. 

I was planning on only pulling One med off the stack of 4 to use as a nuc. Take the extra surplus honey off. Recombine it so as to not make another hive. (I actually am starting with two hives, and have enough stuff to make 3, but them what? I don't really want to go beyond the two, so that the 3rd set up will be my "extra."

Thank you!!
I love hearing everyone's thoughts on the subject  :-D

Well you could sell the extra splits you make to keep yourself at the required 2 hives, honey and pollenation only the only way to make money with bees, actually selling hives can be a better source of income than the honey and pollenation combined.  It pays for the equipment and you can always sell on a box and frame replacement deal so you don't have out of pocket expenses.

You can do as you propose but combining back for the fall is going to end up with a larger than normal cluster which may tax your stores unless you do the combine around September 1, but even then you may be making a situation where the remaining queen doesn't produce enough late fall/early winter bees to see the hive through the winter because of the dense population.  Using up stores due to large cluster size, having excess die off (that can plug up the hive), and leaving an insufficient amount of late born bees still puts successful overwintering in the question mark catagory.

[Michael Bush]

It depends on the size of the cluster.  There is nothing wrong with four mediums with a large cluster.  They can burn that up in the spring buildup some years.  But a small cluster it would be a waste of space.