Michael Palmer wrote

> Personally, I would never break up the bees broodnest by inserting empty 
> combs between combs of brood. I would think that any given colony would 
> maintain a certain sized broodnest. Adding empty combs between combs of 
> brood might increase the overall size of the brood nest, but when the 
> brood hatches, the bees would go back to the size broodnest that they are 
> able to manage. Why would adding combs lead to a faster buildup?

Here in Australia it is common to add empty frames to the brood nest in 
spring.  I do it and find no problems.  I believe it builds up the colony 
faster.  I do not find that the queen goes back to the original broodnest 
size when adding frames.  She continiues to lay out unless the conditions go 
off then she may not expand but she would not expand naturally under such 
conditions.

This comb manipulation is part of my comb rotation.  Taking the outside 
combs and moving them up above the excluder and putting in newly drawn combs 
is my way.  These ouside combs are often full of honey in the first 
manipulations but on the subsequent ones they usually have brood in them. 
The brood can hatch above the excluder and the queen has empty cells in the 
bottom to lay in.  This way it is common to have all 9 frames in the brood 
box with brood.

If that honey is not taken out, then it usually stays there and the queen is 
thus restricted in the amount of cells she has to lay in.

Some may as why the excluder?  For me it enables me to take honey without 
having to sort each comb individually.  This saves a lot of time.  No, I 
don't find the excluder acts as a barrier to my brood production.  I know 
some who run double brood boxes but the queen usually goes up the middle of 
both boxes and if you count the number of frames with brood, it is usually 
not much more than the 9 I get by comb manipulation.

FWIW

Trevor Weatherhead
AUSTRALIA

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