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  • Spreading the brood

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More advanced beekeeping discussion forum.
 #8567  by AdamD
 24 Aug 2020, 10:17
In Ted Hooper's book 'Guide to Bees and Honey' which is good in my view, he gives a fairly long explanation about brood spreading to grow the size of the stock in spring; in simple terms a frame with a small amount of brood from the outside of the brood-nest is put in the middle of the brood-nest, encouraging the queen to lay on it. I guess that if there are plenty of bees and the colony would otherwise grow slowly, it might encourage the colony to grow faster than it would otherwise do. Conversely, a colony that's covering the brood thinly because it's already expanding as fast as it can would struggle to keep all the brood warm so brood-spreading might be counter-productive.
Does anyone spread the brood or just leave the bees to do what bees do?
 #8569  by NigelP
 24 Aug 2020, 14:19
I call it management :)
In spring I find most of my queens in double brood boxes will only lay in the warm top box. My spring management is to move laid frames down stairs and bring empty ready to be laid in frames upstairs, This seems to do the job and I can end up with quite enormous colonies by late spring....of course the huge number of bees can lead to swarming issues.
 #8577  by Chrisbarlow
 25 Aug 2020, 08:41
I double brood and similar to Nigel , I swap the brood boxes round. To get brood frames to the bottom and empty frames to the top.


On single boxes I tend to put an empty drawn frame straight in the centre

It's a judgement call on whether there are enough bees to cover brood though.
 #8578  by Patrick
 25 Aug 2020, 12:13
On overwintered double broods I sometimes do a box swap if they are expanding well - if they are not sufficiently strong and there is a flow on they can sometimes just use the extra space to fill with stores, which can be a pain, so its a judgement call of when. I appreciate that some strains may expand faster.

I quite often swap into the cluster outer unused drawn out combs if the brood nest seems congested or restricted. Don't usually use foundation though in that context as it provides a break in continuity of the brood nest unless they are inclined to draw it out, which they often seem reluctant to do. I prefer getting brood combs drawn above the cluster not within it. If you are starting out then obviously needs must..