Thoughts on Single Brood Management

hey everybody it's Josh it's a beautiful fall day here in Kentucky I really probably should be outside enjoying the weather but I wanted to go ahead and put a quick video together we had a question in the comments on another video that I posted about single brood management um now those of you that have seen my other videos have probably noticed that I only use single deeps or single brood management throughout my apiary and there's a reason for that and I thought I'd kind of go over the pros and the cons if you decide that you want to run single brood management throughout your apiary so you can make whatever decision that you feel is right so when you when you talk about single brood management what that really means is is that for for each Hive that you have in your apiary you're only using one deep so this is a standard deep body that you would have 10 frames in here for the bees uh anything beyond that using two of these or more uh double deep triple deep for really large hives uh obviously would be you know something different than just than just single brood management or single deep uh so just I guess to kind of go over some of the some of the advantages of single brood management number one it's it's less expensive so you don't have to buy as as much equipment you only have to buy one deep and you only have to have 10 frames for the queen uh to lay throughout and for the Beast to be in uh at least throughout the brood chamber it's cheaper to feed you don't have to feed as much um you know if you have uh two deeps or three deeps worth of bees you know you could have tens and tens of thousands of bees in there it's going to require a lot more food another Advantage it's cheaper to treat for mites so a lot of these Mite treatments will go by whether it's oxalic acid or apoguard or apivar or you name it might await quick strips whatever your mic treatment of choice is a lot of times goes off of how many deeps you have in the hive whether it's a single double or triple you have to use more miticide whatever it may be so your expenses go up from that standpoint I also think it's just easier to manage which is why I switched quite frankly not really due to cost savings or anything but I just think overall it's a lot easier to work with a single deep than it is two or three it saves my back uh you know when you're when you're doing inspections and you have to lift off those heavy Brew Chambers or those deeps each time to get to the bottom one you know that can you know hurt your back after a while I just think it's easier to do an inspection so I only have to look through 10 frames within the brood chamber if I want to find my queen it's easier to find my queen it's a lot quicker than than going through 20 or 30 frames that she may be on I know I can find my queen relatively pretty quick if I need to let's say I want to do a walk away split or what let's say the queen is underperforming and I need to pinch her what whatever the reason is if you need to find the queen it's a lot quicker and easier to find one with single brood management right so there's only 10 frames to go through now some of the critics will say uh well there's not enough space for the queen to lay in well I don't I don't have a frame or near nearby I should probably should have grabbed one but if you look at your standard frame don't quote me on this but I think each side is approximately two to three thousand cells on each side it may be three thousand total for both sides so it may be fifteen hundred percent but that's that's three thousand Eggs three thousand spots that the queen can lay in on just one frame in a single deep like this holds 10 frames so you do the math right you can still get pretty large colonies within just a single deep no it's not going to be as large as if you had double deeps or triple deeps for enormous colonies but I've yet to find a reason why I need to have a massive Colony um you know some people say that's another criticism well you won't get as much honey from if you just rock single single brood management versus double or triple because the colony will be smaller you know that is true The Colony will be smaller but this spring I pulled 50 or 60 pounds of honey off just one Colony so it was a single deep like this and I had three supers on top of that single deep and that was plenty of Honey now I mean I'm not a commercial beekeeper you know I'm just a backyard Enthusiast I have I have 10 hives currently so I'm my primary goal is not to make honey and sell honey I just do it as a sort of uh ancillary sort of thing you know I I just enjoy keeping bees so the main reason that I'm a beekeeper is because I think to be a good Steward of pollinators is a good thing and I want to help ensure their survival I want them to proliferate throughout Oldham County and Kentucky and anywhere else and I just want to do my part to to be a good beekeeper you know wax production you know if I make candles or use wax for anything else or honey is just an added perk an added benefit quite frankly it's a lot of work I mean it's a lot of work to extract honey it's a lot of work to process beeswax that's not the main reason that I'm in this I'm not going to quit my day job so this is just uh you know a hobby for me right so if I can get 40 50 60 pounds of honey off of single brood management I don't care I don't care if I'm missing out on another 20 30 40 pounds of honey because I don't have some massive Colony those massive colonies um you know can be difficult to work with that's a lot of bees that you're having to go through that's a lot of bees to force out of the supers you know it the larger the colonies generally speaking um the more difficult or more effort they can be to manage and to work with and uh that's just not something I'm interested in so my very first year of beekeeping I had some double deep so I've actually never had a triple triple deep Colony but I have some friends that have um and again they're creating more space in an effort to prevent swarming which I'll touch on here in a minute as well uh but the my very first year of beekeeping I did double deeps and I just found it a little cumbersome as with all things with beekeeping you have to do what works best for you and this so far is what works best for me I'm not going to go out and say that I will never have double or triple deeps again but right now the the advantages and the pros of rocking single brood management outweighs the cons in my opinion so let's talk about an another con and that's largely the biggest one that it comes to single brood management is you're going to have to deal with swarming a lot more and I mean a lot more than somebody that has double or triple deeps so that urge to swarm you know you're forcing all the bees and the queen and the brood in just one deep Colony bees naturally when they're building they naturally want to go up they want to go vertical rather than horizontal I don't give the queen anywhere else to go but horizontal and they will the bees will if that's all the space that you give them but you think about it in sort of their natural habitat a lot of honeybees will go inside of large trees Hollow trees they build comb vertical right versus out horizontally they'll still do it horizontally but it's not their preference but I force them to do it when it comes to single brood management well if those bees draw out all 10 frames and that Queen has 10 frames to lay on that's still plenty of space for the most part now the exception is During a flow so what will some beekeepers do During a flow that still only rock single brood management what they'll do is first thing in the springtime they'll take their single deeps and they'll put a super on top of those and they will not use a queen excluder so what does that do well number one it gives more b space right it gives more space for the bees to go up into that honey super and it also gives your queen another area to lay in now what will she do will she at first start to lay up there yeah she might and you've helped suppress that urge to swarm the bee still May swarm anyway I mean all we're doing is beekeepers you know I like I like the analogy of like the gutter guards in a bowling alley right we're like the gutter guards the bowling ball is still going to go where the bowling ball goes but we're trying to guide it and that's what we do as beekeepers bees are gonna do what bees are gonna do but but we can help steer them or guide them in a certain direction so when you put that super on top of the deep in the springtime you're giving the Beast more space and you're giving the queen more space to go up in there and lay at a certain point that once those bees hatch okay the bees then will backfill with honey that space and generally speaking the queen would stay down below I still don't do that when I put the supers on in the springtime I immediately put the queen excluder on I this is me personally I do not want to have honey and comb that has had bee larva and B Pupa inside of it there's like a there's a once the bees hats there's like this brown sort of shell from the pupa that's left over it doesn't really hurt anything but if you ever want to sell comb honey um you know Aesthetics are important you want that wax to be fresh you want it to be new you want it to Sparkle you know be clear and you want the honey that's inside it you don't you don't want to have any reason for someone to look at and be like oh that's brown you know I don't I don't wanna I don't want to buy that or I'm I'm not interested in that right so I do not as a general principle let my Queens lay up in Honey supers so I use Queen excluders lots of beekeepers don't use Queen excluders I can do an entire video on the pros and cons of using a queen excluder some people call them honey excluders I laugh at that because I use Queen excluders on all of my hives and I got I don't know 120 pounds of honey off of two hives this year that had Queen excluders so you call them honey excluders I got more honey than I than than I need you know suit all my needs so I'm doing I'm again personal preference but for me uh I use the queen excluder so I'm not going to let that Queen travel upside this box so she's got to stay inside here so what does that mean well the urge to swarm is going to be triggered uh pretty heavily in the springtime and usually it's early in the springtime once the bees start in the flow once the bees start putting uh the nectar in there and curing it for honey and putting the pollen in there that urge to swarm goes down significantly because now you know again they have something to stay for right but all bees naturally want to swarm that's how they ensure the survival of their species so my thought process is you know what if they swarm they swarm you know then once again I am helping to uh proliferate honeybees into nature and I'm helping pollinators and I'm helping them grow in numbers right uh oftentimes I you've seen my apiary it's surrounded by Woods the vast majority of the time I can tell when one of my hives has sworn because the numbers you know will drop Maybe by a factor of you know uh you know buy a half the population um you know that Queen and that swarm will land in a tree or a branch right next to my apiary and I just go collect them and then if I don't want to continue to grow or increase the numbers in my apiary then I can just put them in a nuke and I can sell a nuke to somebody that wants to become a beekeeper or if somebody wants the genetics that are in my apiary and they want to buy a new coffee made that's fine too right so if they swarm they swarm if I catch them great if not oh well you know what even if bee swarm uh early in the springtime the bees that are left behind can still make plenty of honey so it's really not that big of a deal I know beekeepers hate losing their bees that way but I just I kind of have a different attitude about it I'm just kind of indifferent you know if they swarm hey I'm helping I'm helping the pollinators if I capture the Swarm great if not you know you know farewell you know good luck girls hope you do well so that's the biggest downside to single brood management is that you have to deal with swarming more now there's all sorts of ways that you can prevent swarming um but that requires frequent intervention you know you're in the springtime you're going through frames if you find those Queen cups you can pinch all the queen cups to where they don't have any choice but once that urge to swarm is triggered generally the bees will keep making Queen cells they just want to swarm but there's there's other methods to to for swarm prevention you can you can Google it you can look it up some beekeepers clip the the wing on their on their Queen so the queen goes to take flight she's unable to do so she lands in the grass the bees get all disoriented they get confused they go back to the hive they raise a new Queen the queen in the grass usually just parishes but you haven't lost all your bees I don't do that I don't clip my my Queen's Wing but that is a form of sworn prevention again you could do an entire video on Swarm prevent preventative measures I don't really do much to prevent swarms it is what it is I just deal with it as they happen some beekeepers choose to actively try to prevent the Swarms so if you decide to go with the single brood management just understand and know that you're going to have to deal with swarming a lot more uh what other benefits so I talked about you know it costs less money and Equipment the miticide treatment is going to save you money it's just much easier overall maintenance easier on your back um and uh what else and then I guess the downsides uh really are potentially decreased honey production and also much much uh higher likelihood of swarming or having to deal with swarms more uh with the equipment you know your equipment stretches that much further because you don't have to buy all those that many more frames or you don't have to buy that many more deeps uh I have two or three times the amount of supers that I have deep bodies so you know really it's uh to me that's a huge Advantage also um so if you're thinking about doing it uh I would say you know give it a try that that's to me that's half the fun of beekeeping and why a lot of Engineers like myself get into beekeeping because it has to do with problem solving experimenting trial and error uh you know so I would say if you're thinking about it go ahead and give it a try uh maybe just one or two of your highs if you normally Rock uh double deeps or triple deeps just try it on one or two and see what happens you know see if you like it uh my second year beekeeping is when I switched to single brood management never looked back and I have yet to find a reason why I would want to go back to double or triple deeps I just don't and again this is just my personal preference the way I do things just like with all beekeeping you have to find out what works best for you and if you're a commercial beekeeper or somebody whose livelihood is dependent upon beekeeping you you probably don't want to do single hide management you want to maximize honey production you don't want your bees to swarm very often you want to keep your bees that's your livelihood that's your money right and that's great that's fine that's not my primary objective you know different beekeepers get into beekeeping for different reasons some people get in it purely for the honey some people get in it for wax production some people get in it they don't care about wax or honey all they want to do is raise nukes and sell nukes and sell packages of bees and that's why they get into it right so it really just depends on what your goals are what you're trying to accomplish with beekeeping and your own personal preferences and what you think might work work best for you but I would encourage anyone that's thinking about it to just give it a try and see what you think see if you enjoy it see if you find it easier it is cheaper I don't really think that's debatable but I think it's easier on your back it's easier to manage and uh you know to me the benefits of all that and spending less money on on my treatments the benefits of all that to me outweighs the negatives um but anyway I hope that answered your question I can't remember the name of the individual that posted but I appreciate you asking the questions and to the extent that I'm able to I'll try to answer all your questions and hopefully you all found this video beneficial and it helps you in deciding whether or not you want to go switch over to single brood management and I would love to hear in the comments for those of you that do decide to switch I would love to hear how it goes for you or anything else that I may have missed please chime in with any other benefits or any other negatives that you've found with single brood management for those of you that have already tried it and again just you know hope it works out well for you let me know and I really appreciate you watching

Channel: Bees in the Weeds

Views: 3,211

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Id: jcYkarrBKVE

Length: 17min 36sec (1056 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2022