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Post by David Bamberger on Mar 16, 2011 16:21:03 GMT -7
Hey there all.
I'm getting one colony this year but had an intuition that 2 would make sense. I've since read a little, most notably in Storey's Guide to Keeping Honey Bees, that 2 colonies indeed makes sense to enable comparisons and potentially to repair damage/weakness.
Thoughts on this?
Regards.
dbam
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Post by HarryVanderpool on Mar 17, 2011 16:58:58 GMT -7
Here are a few instances where you would appreciate 2 hives over one: If a hive goes queenless in mid to late summer It can be difficult to successfully introduce a new queen. If you have another hive that is doing well, you can pull a frame or two of open brood with adhering nurse bees and place them centered in the queenless hive. Then place y9our new queen in her queen cage between these two frames. This manipulation takes your success ratio WAY UP. With one hive you are limited in scope of manipulations. In California in early February I found a number of hives that the entire top brood box was solid honey. They were honey bound which is not good for rapid brood build-up. At the same time I had a number of screaming golden Italian hives that were jam packed with bees but down to their last drop of honey. I was able to equalize and checkerboard. The result were hives in perfect condition in both cases. Sometimes in the early spring you find that a hive has a laying queen but a poor one. But you know that it is going to be a while before queens are available. If your second hive is a screamer, you will be able to move frames of brood over to the weak hive accomplishing two things. You are knocking back the screaming hive a bit to set your brood timing ahead. (got that Normy?  ) and you are boosting the weaker hive so that it will be up to speed when you new queen arrives. Besides you will have twice as much fun with 2! |
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Post by drew on Mar 17, 2011 19:46:33 GMT -7
2 becomes 25 faster then you think  |
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Post by David Bamberger on Mar 21, 2011 15:01:28 GMT -7
Thanks for the info. I think my mind was made up but wanted a second opinion.
Regards.
dbam
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Post by rbz on Mar 24, 2011 19:10:29 GMT -7
2 becomes 25 faster then you think So true... |
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) and you are boosting the weaker hive so that it will be up to speed when you new queen arrives.
