Waldig wrote:
>The idea of an unlimited broodnest is not to extract from the broodnest.
Once the brood rearing gets under way in the spring AND a honey dome is
set-up in the upper broodnest, the supers are put on.
When I did beekeeping in California (1974 to 1990), most of the people I
knew ran bees in deeps with no queen excluders. There was no attempt to keep
the honey and brood separate. In fact, a lot of beekeepers would
"undersuper". With no excluder, this is practically an invitation for the
queen to move into the supers. So, you *really* had an unlimited brood nest.
A good colony would be in five or six deeps. As the honey came in, the honey
would force the queen back down. Pulling honey always involved finding some
brood in the supers. This would be pretty obvious because the fume board
doesn't work as well on supers with brood in them. At this point, I would
either swap the broody frames for full honey frames, or wait and set the
brood onto colonies back at the honey house.
Personally, I always top supered (less work) and so the queen would usually
be kept down by the honey barrier you describe. Unfortunately, sometimes the
colony would fill in too much of the lower brood nest, and these frames
would have to be moved up by the beekeeper. That's why some prefer to put
the empty supers under the full ones, to prevent the hive from getting
"honeybound".
I never noticed any bad effect from having honey stored in brood combs. On
the contrary, the bees seem to prefer to put honey in old combs, given a
choice. The old frames are much less prone to blow out in the extractor,
too. Of course, I understand that with the widespread use of miticides, many
people want to segregate the brood combs from the honey supers. Still, being
able to use the same frames for honey or brood is handy.
Pete
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