"Once hives are supered, I rarely check brood boxes unless colony is below
average hive entrance activity.
Some yards I don't split at all. They get supers piled on (5-7 mediums)
around first week of April."

Tim,

I tried a couple of hives with three deeps for brood chambers this year and liked the results.  I am in the same climate you are in and much the same forage. 
I have a couple of questions:
1.  Do you run a queen excluder on top of the three deeps?
2.  Do you run eight, nine or ten frames in your honey supers?

I have wondered if running eight frame supers might pretty much keep the queen from laying up there when she has three deeps and avoid the need for an excluder?  I have wondered if lack of an excluder would reduce the swarming tendency?

I do not think three deeps is practical for anyone who is migratory at all.  But for us stationary people it is no problem at all as far as I can see other than that top deep gets real heavy.  That may be good as it discourages over frequent snooping in the brood chamber.

Dick
" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken



          
  
 

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