> Using your dimesions (roughly as I am not sure if that's outside or
> inside) you have 2835 cubic inches, and a lang deep has 2630 (rounded)
>
Yep, didn't seem right to me either, but when I did the math, Peter
appears to be correct.
Langstroth deep hive frame (thick bottom bar) exposed comb surface alone
Width Depth Sides No. per box Total area Cells/sq in No. worker cells 17
7.875 2 10 2677.5 25 66,938
British National hive frame
14 8.5 2 11 2618 28 73,304
At
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Beekeeping/British_National_%28or_Modified_National%29
I found the opinion that: "Many strains of honey bee bred in the UK are not
comfortable with their brood restricted to a single national brood box. It
is quite common for brood and a half to be used and with prolific strains
such as Carniolan
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Beekeeping/Honey_Bee_Races#Carniolan_Honey_Bee>
even this can be too little and two full size brood boxes are used."
Do I did some more math:
Queen laying capacity
Eggs/day Days to emergence Total cells brood 1000 20 20,000 2000 20
40,000 1000 21 21,000 2000 21 42,000
The 20-day figure is, based upon Dr Robert Danka's data, more realistic for
U.S. bees than the 21-day figure in the books. The egglaying rate is based
upon Lloyd Harris's data (unpublished), in which his most prolific queen
layed fewer than 2000 eggs per day at her peak in June (1000-1500 eggs per
day at peak were more typical).
Now I know that queen egglaying restriction has been discussed ad nauseum
(I'll leave it to others to search Bee-L history in their spare time), but
the figures above are of interest to me. It appears that even a prolific
queen would never need more than 2/3rds of the available brood comb area in
a Lang deep containing 10 frames at her peak, and around a third on average
during the season. Bees prefer to store pollen and nectar in a ring around
the brood in the remaining area. However, many of us have seen
wall-to-wall brood in a single deep in spring when a queen is restricted to
a single deep Lang brood chamber (Aussie beekeepers please feel free to
weigh in), so I'm not clear on why the theoretical predictions do not
necessarily match observation.
In any case, if one can prevent swarming, it seems that a single deep Lang
is enough (again, Aussie beeks please weigh in), provided that the colony
has empty drawn comb immediately above the excluder.
But wintering is another matter, dependent upon winter needs for energy
from honey, and what you want the colony to look like in early spring (as
for almond pollination).
I've heard of Canadian beeks feeding singles in prep for winter until they
weighed 45 kg (I realize that kg is actually a measure of mass rather than
weight, thank you in advance). This would leave, by my reckoning, roughly
zero empty drawn comb. By the time that the queen is ready to resume
egglaying in December, they would have consumed enough of the syrup "honey'
to give her room.
But for those of us who don't normally feed syrup for wintering, or who
need to have strong colonies for almonds, singles are more problematic.
Here in the dry Calif foothills, a single may not store enough honey in
late summer/fall to make it through the winter. If you feed it, you can
get by with a single deep until spring rains, when singles easily starve.
A double (or a one and a half) on the other hand allow plenty of room for
storage of beebread and honey around the broodnest to allow for a margin of
safety in poor weather.
When in the almonds, a strong but light weight colony can easily starve
during bloom if it rains, whereas one going in heavy can quickly plug out
and restrict the queen if it's warm and sunny during bloom, which can lead
to swarming in the orchard in March.
--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com
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