BBKA Forum

This duff colony I've got is imho not much more than a nuc,and also it's got some nasty old comb (plus some defective newer stuff )that could well do with coming out.
Until they decide what they're doing I thought about making a couple of wide dummy frames/ dividers (perhaps 2 or 3 frames wide each )and push the brood all up to the warm end
If things pick up I can take the dividers out as they expand.
Yes / no?

Dummying down a hive so the bees have less space to play in does make sense. Polyhives are great for small colonies as they are well insulated and they allow small colonies to expand - also good for overwintering small colonies too. If the comb is poor, the bees don't usually mind but I would be inclined to keep it to one side of the hive rather than put it in the middle and then allow the colony to expand onto new comb sideways. It will subsequently be easier to remove the old comb at the side of the hive rather than in the middle.

Personally I would move it to a poly nuc for previously mentioned reasons. Otherwise I wouldn't change anything, reason being I tend to get lots of extra bits of kit that are only used once in a few years that I have to store.

Thanks guys
I'm just starting out so that dummy kit could be used to semi permanently downsize an old bait hive that was originally a broodbox and turn it into a nuc(I only have one polynuc and it's currently occupied by this lots potential replacements)