Narrow frame beekeeping question

[ccar2000]

This is my sophomore year and again I lost both of my hives this winter. Both in Mid-February. I had better luck with the Russian/Carniolians this year than I did with Italians last. This spring I will be using 1 1/4" frames in my brood boxes. One train of thought is that with narrow frame brood boxes maybe the winter cluster would have a better chance of survival? I also am going to concentrate on building up bees in the months before winter. Maybe September and October and on until they stop taking patties and syrup. Any opinions welcome, thanks.

[Kathyp]

how were your stores going into fall?  how much late summer/early fall brood did they raise?  you can skip the pollen patty in fall.  brood rearing naturally goes down in fall and they should have enough stuff in by then.  it's important to make sure they have capped enough honey for winter and putting on extra dry sugar doesn't hurt.  lots of hives are lost late winter and early spring.  sometimes the queen is lost.  sometimes the hive just wasn't strong enough to make it.   often, there were not enough stores above the bees and as the start to get active, they end up starving.

do you have any idea why you lost your bees?  or at least a good guess?

[iddee]

I never like to disagree with Kathy, but I have to this time. I feed patties in the fall for Jan. and Feb. brood, not fall brood. Feb. and early March is when the majority of colonies die. I like to know they have both protein and carbs to last until the spring bloom.

Being in your sophmore year, without knowing myself what you have done, i suggest you look back and determine if you killed them with love. I see soooo many newbies doing waaaayyy too much for the bees all year. It's like a toddler squeezing a kitten to death. They don't know they need to give it room to breathe.

[ccar2000]

I have been maintaining and over wintering in two deep brood boxes. Both hives had plenty of stores, honey and bee bread too. A couple of days the temps climbed up and the girls were even moving the stores around. They were right in the middle of the upper deep but not at the top. I do not believe they starved since they were not head first in the cells. I understand that the Russians maintain a pretty small cluster and actually cease brood production in the winter. In both cases I had very small clusters.

How do you build bees going into winter without feeding patties?

[Michael Bush]

I don't know that they winter better on 1 1/4", probably not a lot of difference, but they can raise more brood quicker as they can cover more brood.  This might make a difference in winter survival if they can raise more young bees over winter, but all in all winter survival is about stores and not dwindling too small to generate enough heat to keep going.

Looking at the big picture of 200 hives with a lot of them 1 1/4" and a lot of them not (The plastic frames from Mann Lake are not and I have a lot of them), I don't really see any noticeable  difference in winter survival between the two.  The eight frame boxes seem to winter better and the mediums seem to winter better, and the narrow frames seem to build up faster.

[ccar2000]

Iddee,
I perform inspections every two weeks up until the first of winter. I never do an inspection when it is less than 50* or so, I may open the hive but don't remove frames if it is not warm enough for the girls to be out flying. I fed them as packages but otherwise did not need to the rest of the year. They filled both brood boxes and a medium super each. I checkerboard the broodnest to keep it open. I do not think I over pamper them. Do I?

[ccar2000]

Thank you Michael, How does one build the brood nest prior to winter so they have more bees to cover more brood?
I believe that the cluster go too small with the Russian/Carniolians because the still had stores. The Italians starved out because they just moved straight up the brood box and ran out of honey above them. There were stores along side of them but the did not break cluster to move the stores around.

[Kathyp]

in your area I'd be surprised if you ever needed to feed pollen patties.  if you are looking in your hive in September-ish and seeing plenty of pollen stored, and you still have a good amount of brood, you are good. if you were to find no pollen stored or being brought in, or not enough brood, you could feed, but watch those patties. they get moldy in the damp and can attract SHB if they are in your area.  you do need to push syrup late in the season because in your area, you will have enough warm days even at your elevation in winter that they will break cluster fairly often (most years).  in winter, it's the capped syrup/honey you need for them to make it through.

i start feeding patties in febuary...although not this year.  

iddee, you lie  :evil:  you love to disagree with me!  you have brood all year?

[iddee]

"Do I?"

That is a question only you can answer. Every beek on this forum does differently.

Myself, I only go into a hive when I have a definite purpose. Then only deep enough and long enough to accomplish my purpose. If a hive looks good at the entrance, I may check it 3 times a season. If I have concerns, I may check it every 3 days until the concern is gone. And anywhere in between.

Most of my checks consist of hefting the hive for weight, and observing the entrance activity.

Now, let's start the arguments.......
I don't use screen bottoms, extra ventilation, foundationless frames, queen excluders, varroa treatments, shb traps, slatted racks, Insulation, or many other things other beeks use. I don't reverse hive bodies, nor destroy queen cells.

Disclaimer.....
I may use some of them if I were in certain locales, but I happen to be in an area where I don't feel the need for them.

[ccar2000]

Lucky for me, I have not had any mold issues. The only mold I found was in a dead out and it was just on the bees. Also, thankfully I do not have SHB in my area. I am below the AHB line though. It's actually pretty dry here and I keep the hives well ventilated with screened inner covers and solid bottom boards. I also add an upper entrance above the brood nest when I install the excluder and super up.

[iddee]

"iddee, you lie   :evil:  you love to disagree with me!  you have brood all year?"

But I seldom get the chance. I agree with what you say too often.


Brood all year? I don't know. When I close them up in the fall, I don't bother them again until late Jan. or Feb. I do have brood at that time. Usually less than a frame, total.

[ccar2000]

Now, let's start the arguments.......
I don't use screen bottoms, extra ventilation, foundationless frames, queen excluders, varroa treatments, shb traps, slatted racks, Insulation, or many other things other beeks use. I don't reverse hive bodies, nor destroy queen cells.

I am with you on most of these. I do use a parallel slatted rack and the items I previously mentioned.

[Michael Bush]

>How does one build the brood nest prior to winter so they have more bees to cover more brood?

Everything about bees is about locality.  In my locality, most years I do nothing.  Some years I put out pollen in the fall.  Some years I feed in the fall.  It depends on what happens that year.  In other localities it may be more predictable and what to do may be easier to predict as well.  A  lot of the size of a cluster is genetics.  It's what the bees decide to do going into winter.

>I believe that the cluster go too small with the Russian/Carniolians because the still had stores.

And yet both of them can make it through the winter in smaller clusters than the Italians.

> The Italians starved out because they just moved straight up the brood box and ran out of honey above them.

Sounds like Italians.

>There were stores along side of them but the did not break cluster to move the stores around.

That happens to all races of bees.

[Brian D. Bray]

Being in your sophmore year, without knowing myself what you have done, i suggest you look back and determine if you killed them with love. I see soooo many newbies doing waaaayyy too much for the bees all year. It's like a toddler squeezing a kitten to death. They don't know they need to give it room to breathe.

Freshmen beekeepers make a lot of mistakes, that's a given, part of learning.  Sometimes those mistakes can be fatal, not immediately but later on. Sometimes the beekeeper gets lucky and the bees survive despite the beekeepers adminstrations.
But there is one thing that is never the beekeepers fault, Italian bees will often devote all of its stores to brood production before the last of the worst weather of winter is over.  When that happens the hive will die of starvation when cold/wet weather prohibits the bees from foraging for a protacted length of time (1-2 weeks) and they will consume any remaining stores and then cannabalize any eggs, larvae, or pupae still in the white before dying of starvation.  Italians are more likely to stovepipe their stores, eating up through the hive and not touching the honey on the sides.

I don't know that they winter better on 1 1/4", probably not a lot of difference, but they can raise more brood quicker as they can cover more brood.  This might make a difference in winter survival if they can raise more young bees over winter, but all in all winter survival is about stores and not dwindling too small to generate enough heat to keep going.

Not much difference just 9 or 11 frames instead of 8 or 10, goes nice with small cell.  That extra frame does make for faster build up (which means faster stores consumption) with that extra frame of brood.  Too much brood too soon, is a common problem with Italians so this management style can work adversely when adverse weather hits.

Looking at the big picture of 200 hives with a lot of them 1 1/4" and a lot of them not (The plastic frames from Mann Lake are not and I have a lot of them), I don't really see any noticeable  difference in winter survival between the two.  The eight frame boxes seem to winter better and the mediums seem to winter better, and the narrow frames seem to build up faster.

Those 2 extra frames in a 10 frame hive (the outside ones) are the ones that are left untouched when a hive stovepipes its stores.  I've never seen this happen in 8 frame hives, even with Italians.  I agree that 8 frames overwinter better than 10 frames and that mediums work better than deeps.  It's a cubic space thing, occupied to unoccupied ratio.

Want to improve chances of successful overwintering by creating more late fall brood?  Harvest pollen periodically during the summer and feed it back to them post harvest.
Want to have a hive survive those late winter blues?  Position the stores so that most of the frames containing bee bread (pollen, honey, ensyme mixture) are in the top box.

And use 8 frame equipment to reduce winter losses.