In a message dated 12/19/03 1:46:42 PM GMT Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:


> Now Murray says he puts the left over brood on the top
> of the hive. Due to the temperature at night, wouldn't it be better for me
> to put the brood just over the excluder?

First and most important, I would NEVER presume to know enough about just
what the circumstances are in your area at this time with the information given
already. I just don't know enough about what is going on.

My decision making on this manoeuver (sp?) is stricty based on the
circumstance in play at the time.

Particularly the rate of laying of the queen. It is a system I use in the
spring/early summer expansion phase, and at no other time of year. We can get
down to zero at the time during the night, but rarely, however nurse bees do not
leave the brood unattended, only redistributing themselves as the balance of
brood developes in favour of the new nest in the bottom box.

I suspect it is not likely to be particulary beneficial on a winter eucalypt
flow.


 And another question. About how

> long do you think a young queen would take to fill the bottom brood
> chamber?

In our spring build up, provided the colony was covering the whole bottom
box, we find the operation requires repeating just about every three weeks.


Touched on elsewhere is the tendency of the bees to dump nectar in the free
space for handling later, but they quickly move this upstairs apart from the
normal stores arc, so long as the queen is reasonably vigourous. I don't
consider it much of a problem, as we rarely shake bees off the combs anyway, and
there is little need to examine that box in any depth until it contains a
relatively mature broodnest.

Additionally, Lloyd mentioned having a super immediately above the excluder,
between the new nest and the old.  We do this too. For some reason it helps
the system to work better.

Murray

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