Thank you for the reply Claire, Did some research after sending you the questions. Looks like many positives for using 9 frames in the deeps. Will probably go that way next spring. Thanks again for all the informative posts.
Hi, Scott!
So glad you are back into beekeeping. I've been putting nine frames in my ten frame brood boxes for years. I asked Carolyn Breece about it years ago and she said there's nothing wrong with doing that. She does it, too, sometimes. I believe she had one caution but I can't remember what it was. So I'll send her a note after the holidays.
The brood frames are built out as normal. They don't add wax to make them deeper the way they do with honey supers. The cells remain the same size. So there's no queen issues or any effect on the size of the bees.
I love having nine frames in a brood box and I think the bees do, too. As the hive gets larger and larger it's so much easier to do an inspection. The bees are gentler because they are less crowded. The frames are not propolized together. I really believe it reduces the swarming instinct but then as I said before, that's just my observation and experience.
Claire
Hi Claire I appreciate all the helpful tips that you post. I also use 9 drawn frames in the super. But I have never thought about using 9 frames in the deeps. How long have you been using 9 frames in your deeps? My first thought is that the deeper cells might be a problem when the queen is laying eggs or have some effect on the larva as it grows. Have you noticed anything different in these hives (bigger bees?)
Hope you and your hives are doing well.
Scott
I've been in a few hives lately.
In one, the bees were putting wax on the screen on the bottom of the vent box. Per Patrick who invented the vent box, there should be an inner cover below the vent box during the months the bees are active to prevent them from doing that. He left his foam in year round.
If you have three inches of wax coming down from the bottom brood box, you can be assured the bottom board is upside down (and backwards). Turn it over and rotate it to get the landing board facing the correct way. The brood is likely all drone. You have to cut it off. Feed it to chickens or extract the drones and look for varroa if you are curious, or just throw it away.
It's time to put supers on. If the supers are not drawn out, put in ten frames and do not use a queen excluder. Bees producing wax do not build out comb nearly as quickly if they have to go through a queen excluder. If the combs are drawn, put in only nine frames and space them evenly. They will make fatter honey combs that are easier to extract. I use a queen excluder if the queen is laying brood in the second brood box because I don't want her to start laying in the super.
If my brood frames are all drawn, I put nine frames in the brood box, too. In my opinion, the scent of the queen spreads better and it delays swarming but that's just my observation and may be completely incorrect. It definitely makes extracting frames for future hive inspections easier.
Lastly, I just learned an important lesson yesterday from an American Bee Journal article. Bees which make wax need nectar to build that wax. (I knew that part.) What I didn't know was that they do not use honey, only nectar or sugar water. They will wait for the nectar which then affects other uses of the nectar in the hive. I had combs of honey in my hive this year. So I didn't give them sugar water and even told others they didn't need to for the same reason. My hives have not build up as fast as they normally would. Lesson learned.