On 4-Mar-17, at 8:50 AM, William Lord wrote:

> after switching from 1.5 to double brood chambers 10 years
> ago my honey yields have dropped.  I think a lot of honey stays in the
> upper brood chamber so I have switched back to single brood chambers.
>
Hi Bill & All

A friend at the U of Guelph convinced me 20 years ago, after I proved
to myself mathematically that the queen didn't need 2 or more boxes,
that single deeps were the way to go.  He said then, and still does,
that most bees in Ontario are housed in single brood boxes all year.
My experience with singles is that the brood is wall to wall on most
frames with little honey or pollen.  I use queen excluders on all
hives and find that the bees store their brood food in the first honey
super above the excluder.  I leave this super there all season
because, as Bill says, the bees can starve in a very short time if it
is removed.  If the super must be taken off due to treatments etc, the
bees must be given syrup or other food until the super is returned.
When the hive is stripped down to the single in autumn, and the honey
in the first super is extracted it is darker due to travel staining.
Most large beeks use barrel feeding in autumn, I use syrup baggies to
supplement the goldenrod flow at that time.  In early May, before
swarming time, I give each strong hive a second box of comb (not
foundation) which the queen moves into fairly soon.  I later remove
the original box using the capped brood and food for nucs.
>
> I am keeping bees to make money, by-the-way, for you Darwinians......

Singles produce far more honey and survive winter better than doubles,
in my experience, as long as they are fed lots of syrup in autumn.

Bob Darrell
Caledon Ontario
Canada
44N80W

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html