--- On Mon, 3/22/10, Glen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
My hives overwintered in 2 deep boxes and are now active again. 
I'm trying to remember at what point I should swap the brood boxes (or if this should even be done).  How far into spring do I do that?  I imagine that the queen is starting to lay now, so is it "no time like the present?"

When I was keeping hives north of Indianapolis I ran two hive bodies.  When it was possible I inspected my hives.  If the queen was in the upper hive body and there was no brood in the lower hive body, or very, very little brood in the lower hive body, I went ahead and reversed the hive bodies.  Remember that you don't want to split your brood area if at all possible.  If the brood area is split and you have a cold spell, you run the risk of loosing that brood area that the bee cluster cannot protect.  I found that my hives ran to larger populations with less risk of swarming when I reversed my hive bodies which allowed the queens ample space to lay.  I guess what I learned from that period of time was that the more room the bees had, the less likelihood they were to swarm.  This is not to say that the way I ran my hives should be the way you run yours.  This is just my personal experience in that environment.  Oh yeah,  at that time we had not
 heard of mites, tracheal or varroa.   <BIG SMILE>  Those were the easy days of beekeeping.       Mike in LA



      

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