🔵When to Reverse Brood Boxes

hi i'm cayman reynolds in this video we're going to show you a colony that needs a high body reversal some colonies really need their brew chambers switched around and whether you're running all mediums or a combination of different boxes there are some colonies that at some point might need the top box switched with the bottom this is a perfect hive i think to show you all i've done about 50 of these in this last week not all the colonies needed it some queens are better about dropping down and laying below and some of them are really bad about just staying up top and you have all this empty space down below and at the end of the video we're going to show you a colony at the end of this video a colony that needs an extra brew chamber they're only a single but they need that now it is the second week of march and it is raining now but we found a little time to make this video as i was going through our home yard all right so let's show you what's up top lots of bees plenty of bees and plenty of food however the queen's up here as well and that's a problem because if we have all the food most the bees and this frame feeder and the queen's up here she's going to run out of room delay this time of the year there's a lot of pollen that came in last week and that can actually plug the brood nest as well and whenever she starts running out of room to lay but the bees are growing it can start swarming here in tennessee march the 13th i'm already seeing swarm cells in colonies that are really big good bit of weight there all right nice bit of bees down here but is there a lot of brood and is there a lot of empty space down here and i think there's going to be all right so let's start at an edge frame and see what we have all right this frame has just a tiny bit of honey up in here it's like two percent full it's empty the rest of the way so we're just going to lay this on down let's go more towards the center i see a little bit of drone brood right here what the queens will do sometimes is drop down just a little bit lay part of the tops of the frames and then head back up again let's get these bees out of the way scoot these frames over just a little bit all right so this is a center frame right here let's see if the queen has been laying on this at all that's all pretty much b bread no brew down in there and nothing but empty combs right here or empty cells i should say this frame i do see a little bit of brood i don't think there's going to be any so if that's the case that means all of these right here are just empty brood comes just waiting to be used yeah this is incredibly light there's no brood in that brood's actually quite heavy [Music] not as heavy as honey though that stuff is really heavy all right this is super light as well so there's a little bit of brood in here yeah the queen's come down into here she's laid a little bit but this is not enough she should be able to lay a whole lot more and you know this frame is only maybe halfway full of brood so she's just dipping down she'd probably dip down for just a little bit laid this up went back up top this is a problem the bees are going to run out of room in that top box they probably already have so let's get this put back together and let's do a box reversal we can clean the bottom board if we want to as well let's uh pop this and we're just going to man that is really lightweight so you can see the pollen patty and whatnot that they've been dropping bits of it as they've been eating it this box is a lot more weight swap that around they'll clean that base out before too long i'll come back around and do it all right let's uh get up into here or down into here i guess now make sure the queen's not up on this up here because you don't want to pull it off and fling her away that would that would be bad all right let's see what's going on up here this looks like a good frame to check see if our queen's laying a good pattern i hope so because if she is this high's going to be a good production colony this year it just needs a little oh okay yeah that confirms it right there 20 20 queen looking good best thing that came out of 2020 was our queens they look uh pretty awesome boy i love that but she's running out of room she's got brood all the way up into here there's bee bread there's food stuffs she's not dropping down below she needs more room to lay loaded this this did need to go into the bottom it's about 55 degrees right now so we're going to set this out just for a second and then we're just going to go over here i'm just i got to look around this this girl's doing a wonderful job you just you got to appreciate queens like this you know okay so this is a really nice frame as well and there's just brood all down in there eggs and younger larvae so this is i think starting to emerge out yeah i'm just look at that this is just great but absolutely i mean she can't lay up in here this is all laid up in here this is definitely all laid up so these two frames she's running out of room let's uh move on down the line if you all see the queen let me know okay [Music] all right let's check this edge frame and would you look at that there is just oh man there's just larvae all down in here eggs everywhere she's just laying these frames up poor girl she needs room you just look at this frame right here gorgeous hive i'm imagining the next frame over doesn't have much brood on it or none at all usually the edge frames don't but sometimes they do we're just going to put these back in i'm going to give another puff of smoke they're not really getting too uh agitated but if you like to stay ahead of things you know so we're just going to peek on over on this frame ah yes this is going to have brood i can just tell by the weight of it yep all kinds of young stuff down in there b bread you can kind of also tell by how the bees are acting on the cones nurse bees act very differently than than worker bees you can just kind of you know they're just a i don't know more relaxed definitely more relaxed there's just eggs all the way out to here all the way around this hive is gorgeous all right we're just going to put this together i'm pretty sure there's brood on that frame by the look of it and but she's out of room delay completely out of room delay and we're just going to throw these back together and this box behind us must have at least seven frames that are just completely empty or by and large empty and that's going to allow her to be able to move on up so what are the rules when doing a high body reversal remember just because one hive or even maybe five out of your ten hives need it doesn't mean all of them need it some of them i'm not one of those people that do it to every colony at a certain time like okay it's this time of the year high body reversals some counties are a little bit behind we don't want to do it to a colony that doesn't need it because when we do this we're totally changing the currents in the colony and that can really affect how they are able to warm the brood in a strong colony like this this time of the year where our average temperature is 55 degrees fahrenheit or more during the daytime temperatures we're still getting down to freezing and whatnot but the bees can keep the brood warm a lot easier and this county's got a lot of b power just think what's fixing to come out of all that it's going to be impressive what we are going to do though is we know looking at the weather forecast the next 10 days we're going to have about seven of those days out of 10 that are going to be rainy cloudy and overcast and a couple of them that are pretty cool so we don't want them to feel any nutritional stress we want this queen to just feel like we love her because we do and we are going to give them a pollen patty and that bead just stung me really good ah working bees right after a rain shower i hope you all appreciate this video i'm just kidding this isn't torture to me oh my goodness yeah these bees yeah that be darted on me like that they're just they're done this is not the day for it but i'm just i'm puncturing little spots in there just to help them eat a little bit faster a big colony like this doesn't really need it now this top box is like virtually empty that well now it's gonna be the top box we're going to throw just about a quart of one to one sugar syrup down into here there we go and they're going to move that up into this top box yes is it going to make them gross a little bit faster absolutely some people might not want to do that but i don't want this calling to you know this this colony is going to take so much resources they're going to eat through so much other food we don't want them to run light we won't have a good nectar flow up here for at least at least a month so we're a long way from any significant nectar coming in there'll be trickles of it but this is a big colony fixing to get bigger now that girl's gonna be able to come up into this top box and she is just going to be able to play for her heart's content she's got all the nutrition that she needs to do it oh looks like we got a b anyways so this hive is just exactly what we want to see this time of the year but the queen was locked in that top box now she's got all this room to go and we're going to shut them up they've got nutrition to keep going forward healthy bee population great queens dead mites and good nutrition now let's go look at that single deep box that really needs a double deep so we're over here to a hive that needs a box and it needs it now but we're going to show you more than just throwing a box on we're going to show you what we're going to do to i think encourage the queen to come up and use this top box as fast as possible and entice the bees to get up there as well so it's going to be raining for a little while the bees are full in this hive and we must get some extra space so they're going to swarm this is march mid-march is warm time for us in tennessee whoa okay yeah that's what i was hoping to see and i figured i'd see that all right this should be about perfect timing on this hive right here so what i want to do is go down in here and find a good frame of capped brood now if we were trying to get a box of foundation drawn you want to bring up larvae because that forces nurse bees to come up and they have to maintain those nurse bees obviously it needs to be fairly warm um but you can bring that larvae up and it'll help draw your foundations excuse me b and but this right here i'm going to bring up a frame of capped brood if possible so look it's like these two right here have capped brood and there goes a small hive beetle just scoot these over to the side a little bit there we go on a day like today you want to give them just a little more smoke than usual they have been a little testy today but yeah that's what i'm looking for right there prefer to find something that's emerging or really close to emerging for multiple reasons first if it gets a little cool they're going to be a little tougher in my opinion and also i don't want to have to maintain them as much so this right here is a bunch of capped brood and here's the real kicker the reason i like to do it yeah this will be good right here when this cat root emerges like i've said before it releases a pheromone lets the queen know that there's basically open cells over here that you can go lay in so we want that up in this top box so that we can uh basically have that saying hey come on up here girl and start laying now we also it helps us is we can take one of these completely drawn combs and drop it down below so she has immediate laying room i'm going to lean that right there i think this one right here might be just a little bit better so we are going to check this one out it's a gorgeous looking pattern now this one's a slightly younger they're just now capping all of this right here so we'll just go with the frame that we had so we can just shut them up man what a gorgeous looking hive right here though definitely needs its second box now and we're going to throw a patty on so on a frame that i'm going to throw down this would be a good one it's a brood comb you can tell it's had brood put into it um gauging on this frame and when i got this i'm i'm thinking this frame is probably five or six years old so we're gonna drop this down in here and instant laying room some people don't like dropping it in between brood and whatnot i feel like on a colony this strong it'll be just fine we're going to pop all this back together and i want to throw this frame or frame this pollen patty right up here again just to ensure that they feel like they have plenty of food stuffs coming in and they don't have to worry about nutrition for a while honestly we're going to take this one and we're going to stick it about dead center that'd be good look at that propolis right there at the bottom that is a lot see if i can break that off oh come on now that's what the hive tools for right i'll save that all right we're just going to drop this frame down in here and as that brood emerges that queen's going to come up in here have all the room that she could want to to lay they can also bring pollen up here and they're set for a while but i'm i'm telling you right now the way that bottom box looks we come back three weeks from now this top box is going to be completely full of bees just it's gonna be beautiful i'm gonna go ahead and stick this up here this colony strong they can handle it i don't know what else to do with it i guess i could put it away but delete it there you have it so nothing too fancy going on right here with this but it's very important stay ahead of the bees these strong powerful colonies both of these colonies right here could have swarmed within just a handful of a week or two they look great but these strong colonies they just grow so rapidly in march here in tennessee and this is our heavy we're going to start swarming between now and may is our really heavy swarm time of the year so thanks for watching this video if you have any comments on what we did to reverse those high bodies or anything like that just leave them below

Channel: Kamon Reynolds - Tennessee's Bees

Views: 80,588

Keywords: beekeeping, beekeeper, honeybees, bees, Kamon Reynolds, honey, How to install a package of bees, How to install a nuc, package vs nuc challenge, how to make honey, beehive, Tennessee beekeeping, Tennessee beekeepers, Package of bees, swarming, swarm, swarm control, queen cell, swarmtrap, swarm trapping, how to make a swarm trap, swarm trap, beekeeping for beginners, When to Reverse Brood Boxes, swarm prevention techniques, swarm prevention methods, beekeeping swarm prevention

Id: NJ5zPCw8Jrg

Length: 16min 42sec (1002 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021