Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => Beekeeping 101 => Topic started by: 40 Acre Bees on April 09, 2017, 07:11:19 pm
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I have been doing some reading about having brood boxes that are honey bound. In a double deep 10 frame hive, how many frames of honey should be in the brood boxes, so the queen will have lots of room. Also is there a preferred frame configuration of frame placement? I am thinking that the possibly we lost our one hive this year because the queen ran out of room to lay in the late summer and the amount of bees was way to low to make it through the winter. Is there a common rule that I should use to avoid them getting honey bound. Thanks in advance.
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The thinking is that a queen can only lay up about 9 frames completely (100%) and that brood hatches, opening up those cells for her to refill. I guess that would mean roughly 10 frames should be open for her to lay up, but then also consider that the bees need space for bee bread (pollen and nectar) close by to be able to feed that brood.
When I go through a hive I like to make sure that there is always space for the queen to lay and will remove frames of capped honey (deeps) during the summer and store them for safe keeping later. When I go around in the fall to see if hives are heavy, any that aren't get some of those frames dropped back in.