I just finish reading " Evils of the Double Deep"

Bee Culture – November, 2003

by Walt Wright


and he talks again about the problem langstroth frame give to bees, as how a
full drawn cluster wil have a problem with "the break in functional comb"
and latter a problem when deciding where to place the winter cluster.


It is true that honeybees much prefer to rear brood on the larger expanse of
comb provided by deep frames. It’s as close as they can get to the
continuous comb of the wild brood nest in the tree hollow. But a choice of
two deeps to prepare the winter brood nest is one too many. They do not want
the winter brood nest spanning the gap in functional comb between the two
deeps. So they have to decide, before brood nest closeout in the fall, which
to use. In my area the choice is about 50/50. Half the colonies choose the
lower, and half elect to winter in the upper hive body. Occasionally, a
colony will straddle the decision fence and wind up going into winter with a
cluster two or three frames wide and two stories high. This produces an
inefficient winter cluster shape, but is probably better than selecting one
or the other of the two hive bodies.

In the double deep, during the white wax flow, the colony stores winter
rations. They often treat the gap in functional comb between deeps as the
dividing line between stores. Some will fill the upper with capped honey,
and some will fill the lower with pollen. This pushes the brood into the
other box. In both cases the brood nest is competing with winter stores for
space. This restricts brood nest expansion in the fall when they need to be
rearing young bees for wintering.

I search bee-l for "functional comb" and "gap between frames"  with no
results. Foundationless gave some interesting talk to skep beekeeping, but
could find the videos you where talking then : broken link. buu!!


Have you discussed about the ideal dimension of the frames (depth wise) if
any?, does this gap really exist for the bees as a "break", or they can
handle it quite acceptable while they build "a ladder" with brace comb?




-- 
Juanse Barros J.
APIZUR S.A.
Carrera 695
Gorbea - CHILE
+56-45-271693
08-3613310
http://apiaraucania.blogspot.com/
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