Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => General Beekeeping => Topic started by: dr4ngas on February 08, 2014, 10:24:33 pm
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Hi, I'm thinking about starting bee keeping. I have read over three books and watched about everything on YouTube. I will be attending a bee class from the local club. We are located in Norfolk Virginia. For information on the class please go to BrownPaperTickets.com. The questions I have right now is, How about using Medium frame nucs for the hive? The other option I was thinking about is building 6 frame boxes? I live in a small yard not enough room for two hives. I'm trying to see if I would like this as a hobby.
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Too small a hive will have your bees sending off swarms into your neighbor's yard. A full size 8 or 10 frame hive would be much better.
Two hives can set within inches of each other, so it would be hard to have a yard only big enough for one.
Attend the bee club meetings and ask if you can assist one of the members in working his/her hives. A few trips there should tell you if you want to take up the hobby, and with no money invested other than your protective gear and a little gas.
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I agree with Iddee, don't think small when it comes to hive sizes. There are folks that keep bees on balconies so I am betting your yard is big enough for a couple of hives close together.
If weight is the concern, 8 frame might be something you look at, or run all mediums. If you are trying to limit colony size, swarming is going to cause a bigger problem for you.
Oh, and Welcome to the forum. :welcome:
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When I first started beekeeping I started with 5 frame nucs as hives. The reason was I am an old man and I was worried about the weight issue. I used two 5 frame deep nucs as brood boxes and 5 frame deep boxes as supers. The only major problem I had was stability, in the spring when the bees were really working hard they filled three deep supers pretty fast and the hives looked scary. With 5 deep boxes a strong wind could blow them over and they seemed to wobble a little. I changed to eight frame hives and now have no problems and with eight frames the weight is not a real problem when using shallow supers.
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I get somewhat annoyed when I see "complete" beehive set ups advertised and see they are a stack of four nuc's.. but I have seen them being used. Harder to manage them when they are building in the spring I would bet.. 8 frame mediums would at least be a bit more stable when stacked. Good answers already and I cant add much to what was already said!!!
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Hi, I'm thinking about starting bee keeping. I have read over three books and watched about everything on YouTube. I will be attending a bee class from the local club. We are located in Norfolk Virginia. For information on the class please go to BrownPaperTickets.com. The questions I have right now is, How about using Medium frame nucs for the hive? The other option I was thinking about is building 6 frame boxes? I live in a small yard not enough room for two hives. I'm trying to see if I would like this as a hobby.
You could look up the plans for an old modified dadant/12 frame. You can put however many frames you want in there!!! Do what the germans do, and put divider boards in, then stuff the outside with insulation(gaps between divided board & hive wall). Do what the guys that have spent too much money do, and build your own on a table saw. If you get in trouble with the bees building up too fast, then you can go up to 12 frames. The worst thing you can do is get too small of a box, and have it get away on you(swarm). You won't make friends if the bees are hanging under somebody's porch stinging their yipper dog in the back yard. You might have a lighter-smaller hive with nucs...But they will swarm and you'll have honey boxes that are too heavy to pick up. The queen won't have enough room to lay so she'll move up into the honey boxes whether you like it or not. Then when you're splitting the brood nest up to get the honey, they get grumpy.
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Thanks for all the replies. I'm still deciding on what to use. The class is coming up on the 21st. I will be taking the class and talk to the local beeks.
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most of these will start as a swarm or a nuc, for once they start building home they will rapidly out build a five frame nuc box. they should be immediately put into a 10 frame deep, knowing that they will expand beyond that in a month or less.
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a snip...
You could look up the plans for an old modified dadant/12 frame.
tecumseh...
we use to call these Jumbos. Another modification on this theme is what is called a LONG HIVE < that is rather than the stack rising upwards everything is contained within one long box < all of these I have seen have divider boards which allows you to also reduce the interior dimensions of the box.