The Hive Set-up

This time of year, as folks come to pick up their Nucs, I often get the question of what kind of boxes (Deep, Medium or Shallow) should I use for my bees. It’s a logical question, as there are all sorts of different set-ups out there and it can get confusing.

First, some basics – there are generally three types of langstroth hive boxes:

  1. Deeps (frames are 9-5/8 inches high),
  2. Mediums (frames are 6-5/8 inches high), and
  3. Shallows (frames are 5-11/16 inches high)

When I first got into beekeeping, I remember wondering why in the heck were there three sizes? It’s not like we have small bees and large bees – they are all the same size! I soon found out that Deeps and Shallows had been around a long time. Deeps were traditionally used for the bees to keep their home – raise the brood and store some resources (honey, pollen, etc…) Shallows were for honey – they were smaller and easier to pick up and move around when full of honey. I think most of the old time beekeepers in our area kept bees in two deeps (home/brood chambers) and used a bunch of shallows for honey.

(I use two terms to describe my boxes – brood boxes and honey supers. They live in the former all year round. They store honey in the latter for me to harvest in May/June/July. Depending on the situation, I have used all three boxes sizes for brood chambers, but only Mediums and Shallows for honey supers.)

Mediums came along later, initially to replace the heavy Deeps for brood chambers (I am sure lifting the top Deep off in a two Deep setup would break anyone’s back) but then folks also started to use them as honey supers.

I started off using a double deep setup (as described above) for my brood chambers. Within a couple of years, it was clear to me that it was too much space for my area. The bees hardly made it through a fraction of their honey over the Winter, it was a huge amount of space for smaller colonies to manage and it seemed to encourage swarming (by creating a honey boundary above them from the start of the season.) I soon started to experiment with a single deep under a single medium. This is my primary setup today. I do run Deep-Shallow setups and a few with only 3 mediums for the brood chamber. All of these setups work for me in my area. I seem to prefer the Deep-Medium setup, based on the numbers.

For honey, I use both Mediums and Shallows. Shallows are a dream, mainly because they are fairly light, even when full of honey. I continue to use them to this day, but may end up phasing them out. They are fine if you are running a few hives in your backyard, but having 3 sizes can be a pain when I need to run to 5 different yards in one afternoon and need to be stocked up in all three sizes to be prepared. I am thinking of moving to only Deeps and Mediums, to ease the inspection cycle, but have not committed yet.

For Nucs, I create both Deeps and Mediums. 5 frames of bees, in either the Deep or Medium size.

Why I Never Requeen

A fellow beekeeper, who had just caught a swarm, texted me a day or two ago to understand why I do not requeen. Since it is on my mind this morning, I thought I would dig a little deeper into the topic and at least provide the logic behind “why I do what I do”:)

First, why do people requeen? I do not do it, so this is all heresay – I have heard lots of people talk about it (including the State Apiarist in Virginia).

As a Matter of Course

Most people talk about requeening an established hive. The logic seems to be that getting a new, young queen into the hive every Fall (or maybe every other Fall) reduces the chances of an old drone laying queen, disease or swarming.

In a Swarm

But, in the case above, the beekeeper had heard folks say you really want to requeen a swarm. I believe that some folks like to requeen swarms because they like to have a queen with genetics that they know leading their hives (who knows what this swarm queen might be made of!) I also once heard our state apiarist make the case that you really do not want a queen with an inclination to swarm – and many queens in a swarm are just that.

Try Something New

The third reason is to get a new strain of bee. Maybe you want a Russian line or some other new line of honey bee – the easiest way to get that is to buy a queen from that new line and install her into your hive. Of all of the reasons, this one is the only one that makes sense to me. I no longer do it, but who knows if I may want to experiment in the future? Trying out a new line of bees seems like good fun – it may be the end of the colony, but it’s fun to see what happens.

We Got Problems, Charlie!

The final reasons is when you have a problem – like a drone layer, a nasty, mean hive or maybe a queen that simply is not building up. These are all good reasons, in my book, to requeen. In most cases, I simply find the errant queen, squash her and come back in 3 to 4 weeks to make sure they raised a new gal. With a drone layer, I combine it with a Nuc (I always have one on hand, every day of the year.)

So, why don’t I requeen (excepted as noted above)?

The Ole Gal Is Proven!

I grew up on a farm. When you have a proven line, you do everything you can to continue that line. It makes absolutely no sense to me to look at an established hive, remark how great a line of bees you have there, and then kill the queen and replace her with an unknown factor (some foreign bee). In 99% of the cases, I let my bees replace their queen in their own time. Although the majority of my queens were born last year, I have quite a few that were born 2 and 3 years ago.

Why Not Requeen a Swarm?

I manage my bees based on Darwinism. I do not medicate or really baby them – if they cannot make it in my environment, I bid them farewell. The colonies that do really well are the ones that I create lots of Nucs and splits from. This methodology has really worked for me – I never have anywhere near the losses that the state reports in a give Winter.

When I get a swarm of bees, I know very well there is chance that these are inferior bees. But, there is also a chance that this is from a feral swarm that has been living out in the wild for a few years. I WANT these genes!! Instead of requeening, I actually track my swarms and attempt to spread those genes (through increase) to several of my apiaries over the next couple of years. So, I not only do not requeen a swarm, but I actively am looking for queens in swarms!!

What Is Requeening to Me (when I do it)?

When I do requeen, it is never with a foreign bee. If it is early enough in the year, I just cull the old queen and let my gals raise their own queen. I keep the blood line, break the mite cycle and let nature takes its course. If I just requeened this bunch (maybe Mama was mean as a snake) and am discovering that little princess is equally as mean, I sometimes provide eggs from another nearby hive (aka proven line of bees.)

In the case of a drone layer, I always combine them with a Nuc. It’s a completely different topic (that I sometimes go on and on about), but every beekeeper should always have a Nuc sitting nearby, ready to solve a problem.

The bottom line is that requeening is not part of my general beekeeping tasks and goes against my philosophy, in most cases. I am sure that others have had great success with it. For me, it doesn’t make sense.

Nuc Successes…and failures

I have long ago given up the notion that I can figure out the honey bee. But, it still frustrates me!

I checked a Nuc this afternoon – the very first Nuc that I created this year – for some evidence of a queen. It has been 3 weeks since I created the Nuc which is more than enough time, even in cold weather, for a queen to be raised. She may not be laying yet, but she should be in the little hive. I found a partially torn down queen cell, which told me the queen had hatched, which is a great first step. I looked about for the queen, but I always have difficulty finding them at this age – they seem to be smaller and a lot quicker! I never found her, but made a note to come back in 2 weeks to check for eggs/larvae. This Nuc is in good shape.

Picture of the two kinds of hive set-ups that I run - Medium, Medium, Medium and Deep, Medium
The Two Hive Set-ups That I Run

Then, onto a second yard where I mainly wanted to put a third Medium super on a colony that overwintered in a double Medium Nuc, had been moved to two full-sized Nucs in early March and now needed a third full-sized Nuc to fill out their brood chamber (I rarely use this setup, but it works and was called for in this situation.) As I accomplished the primary task, I noticed two Nucs (in this yard) that I had created on March 25 – there was zero activity… It was late afternoon and well into the 70’s – a good 10 days since the Nucs were created – there should be activity! Argh. I checked both Nucs – the Med Nuc was completely empty – only dead, capped brood. The Deep Nuc probably had a dozen bees… Insanity. I went back to check the weather – no big drops until several days after the Nuc was created, no huge downpours… But, both Nucs, created from the same parent hive, somehow emptied. I feel like there is something that I am missing – there must be a common agent here (and, I seem to recall this happening in the past, in other yards.)

At any rate, it’s all part of the process. I am more happy that I was able to collect the drawn frame from those Nucs now (instead of 9 days from now, when I would have checked for evidence of a queen.) Once the rain passes, I will just create a few more Nucs in a few other beeyards and move on!

Bring Your Snippers on a Swarm Call

A swarm of bees hanging from a Pine tree limb
This is a bunch of honey bees!

When I originally published this post, it was late at night and (in retrospect) I was not very informative about any of it! So, I have decided to revise it a bit and maybe review how I tackle a swarm.

When I get a swarm call, the first thing that I do is ask for a picture. In the early Spring (right now), I really do not have much risk, but as the days get warmer, it is not uncommon to have someone report a bee swarm that ends up being hornets or wasps/yellow jackets. So, when it does get warmer, I pretty much require a pic before I go about gathering the equipment and making the trek out to collect them!

Catching a swarm of bees is fairly simple, assuming their location is accessible. My main goal is to bring a Deep hive body (sometimes, although rarely, I bring a Nuc box) with 10 frames. Ideally, I would like the frames to be mostly foundation (and I sometimes do it with all 10 frames being foundation.) Swarms tend to really draw out comb, so I like to give them plenty of space to do that. Fresh, new comb is the best.

Once I get to the location, I set the box up on the ground, beneath the swarm. My goal is to shake (literally) the bees into the box. I will remove about 6 frames from the center, before I do the shaking, to provide a “hole” for the bees to plop into. Once they are in the box, I gently (but fairly quickly) put the removed frames back into the box and put a top on them. 90% of the time, the bees are “hived”, as they say, right then.


The key is the queen. When you shake the bees, a lot of bees fly into the air and some might even remain on the limb you did the shaking from. There is always a chance that the queen is not in there (which is a problem for me – I do NOT requeen a swarm.) I can normally tell by the way the bees are acting on the landing board – typically, when I have the queen, lots of bees will come out to fan outward, shooting the scent into the air to advertise that this is where the queen and everyone is, come on home. I also see bees actively moving INTO the hive. These are all good signs (although not guarantees) that I have the queen.

At this point, I almost always leave the box on the ground to come back and get them that evening. Once I tape them up and get them to their new home, I immediately (it will be night) open them back up so that they may immediately start flying when the sun comes up. This is a fairly good review of how I get her done. Very, very rarely, I will come back to pick them up and find no bees in the hive. This doesn’t even happen once a year (it didn’t happen last year), but it does happen. A lot of folks take precautions to prevent the bees from leaving.

The above video was an atypical swarm – I usually can get the swarm with my feed on the ground. In addition, I mistakenly grabbed the wrong deep which sucks (this deep was mainly for Nuc creation – I like to replace frames that I take from the mother hive with drawn frames this time of year). Regardless, the bees were hived and are now. The snips made all the difference in the world on this swarm call – it’s a tool I take with me on all calls:)

Drawing Wax in March…

Things seem to be going along splendidly – with only a couple of exceptions, hives are building up at a normal pace, nectar and pollen are coming in and Nuc creation is not behind schedule (it is a relief to finally be managing less than 50 hives! I am no longer constantly behind schedule!!!)

Site Update: Honey Bee Nuc order form is now live and I fixed the Spring Reminders!

Last weekend, I realized that I need a lot more Deep frames to keep going. I started to go back through my records, as I do not remember running out of Deep frames this early in the season. I discovered that the “problem” was that I only lost two hives over the Winter. Normally, I suffer 10% losses on average (from a range of 3.4% to 34.1%) and use the Deeps from those dead out’s to replace frames pulled from my parent hives to create the Nucs. I need something to replace those frames! This past Winter, I only lost 2 hives! This has created a few challenges and one interesting new find (I am always learning!!)

From the challenge standpoint, I normally start painting my plastic frames (with melted beeswax) and building new frames with fresh foundation around tax day. I have had to squeeze in time to get this done now, which was not anticipated. I will not be caught flatfooted next year (although, I am willing to be that losing only 2 hives is likely to be an exception and not the rule, going forward.)

But, from a “Jones is always learning” standpoint, I had one of my theories tested (or actually proven false.) I have long believed that putting foundation into hives in March only increased their likelihood of swarming. Why? Because I did not think that the temperatures were high enough or the flow was good enough for them to draw new wax. By taking a drawn frame (to populate a Nuc) and then replacing it with a frame of foundation or painted plastic, I just removed a room or two from their house, which they would not replace until late April (when I believed real wax drawing started.)

Well, last weekend, I had to drop some plastic foundation (painted with my beeswax) into some hives as I created Nucs. Yesterday, I had to go back into one of those hives (I wanted to create a Medium Nuc from that strong gal, in addition to the Deep Nuc I created last weekend). While looking for the queen, I found that they had drawn out a fair amount of wax! I had to pull the frame a second time to double check (my brain wouldn’t accept it! ha.) It just goes to show, I need to always remember that every single “conclusion” that I think is a “fact” is simply just a theory when it comes to honey bees!

First Swarm of the Season…

Normally, this would be a happy post – catching my first swarm of the year and really getting into the beekeeping “spirit”! But, it has a bitter taste, thanks to HiveTracks (a tool I definitely no longer recommend.)

As happens most of the time, the call came at a very inopportune time. It was a couple of hours before dark and I was on my way to change a flat tire on my Pop’s car. Not only that, but I had my daughter with me. Fortunately, the tire change went quickly and I was able to bribe my eight year old with a dinner out (she had been in my truck for a good bit, so I felt obligated to offer a carrot!)

On the slightly negative side, the swarm was at one of my apiaries. I do not mind swarms, as long as I know when they have happened and I have already taken advantage of the hive’s build up through Nuc increase (more than one!) I had only taken one Nuc from this hive, unfortunately. On the plus side, this swarm was a few feet off the ground, in friendly territory, from a 5-star hive (presumably with one of my better queen lines) and a great opportunity to show an 8 year old a bit of the magic in beekeeping!

Swarm of bees hanging from branch
My daughter tentatively looks at her first swarm!

The catch went fairly uneventfully, although I am used to all of the bees going into the catch hive body after I drop the main mass into it. This time, there were a lot of bees hanging onto the side of the catch box when I left. Normally, I might have gotten the box this evening, but I decided to check on it tomorrow.

Lots of bees hanging on the outside of a swarm catch hive
Most of the swarm is inside..

Interestingly, I had just been thinking about making a post about a hive that I helped a lady with this past weekend with a couple of capped swarm cells, mainly to give folks a heads up about getting into their hives. It turns out, one of my own hives was going to teach me the lesson myself. Although I should spend a whole post on this, suffice it to say that this was 100% due to some crazy update that HiveTracks made to their tool. They seem to have hired some UI guys that might have a hive or two to make some major changes to their app. It completely butchered the To Do list, which I find to be one of the most useful parts of the app. When I heard about the swarm, I immediately remembered looking at a hive in that yard on Mar 13 and noting (in HiveTracks) that I needed to take one or two Nucs from it within a week. But, that To Do was lost in the new HiveTracks. Needless to say, I am moving everything off of HiveTracks, but more on that later. I do not recommend that tool anymore.


Honey Bee Nuc Creation – Don’t Push It

Although I created a couple of Nucs in mid-March, I created several last weekend (the 3rd weekend). In central Virginia (pretty much starting in Richmond and going southeast for about 40 miles), I have found the most success by creating Nucs (on average) in the 3rd weekend. It is true that several hives were strong enough to create a Nuc, the vast majority were coming out of Spring just fine but were not to the strength that I like for taking a Nuc. That said, I tagged a bunch for taking a Nuc this coming weekend (last weekend in March and the following weekend.) This will put most of my Nucs for Sale ready in early to mid-May, which is just fine.

Early Spring Honey Bee Hive with cover off and bees walking on the frames

How do I know that it is time to take a Nuc? Well, let’s talk about my misadventures first. In the early years, I was driven to take a Nuc as early as possible (walking drones! walking drones!!!) – I remember taking a Nuc in February once! Although I did have a few successes with these super early Nucs, it took about 5 years for me to realize that I was really wasting bees – the majority of these early Nucs either failed to raise a good queen or failed to raise any queen at all.

Thanks to record keeping (and having too many hives to muck around with too early in the season), I started noticing that Nucs created in late March (regardless of a warm or cold Winter) just did better over all and, more often than not, I would successfully get another Nuc or two off the same hive (not to mention honey and whatnot.) So, several years ago, I started simply waiting until late March to even look. This has (to date) really proven to be a big boon on my Nuc creation fun (although, my Medium Nucs do not enjoy the same success as the Deeps, so I need to work on that methodology.)

So, it’s late March – what do I look for next? The bees simply need to be making a very strong show in both the Deep and the Medium brood chambers. I want them to be on at least 6 frames in one box and 5 in the other. It can be hard to wait for this (at least for me), but it doesn’t make sense why I feel that way. Every day, more drones are born in the area and the chance of getting a well mated queen increases. But, I have some kind of sickness that I just want to create those Nucs early!!! Well, this year, I have held off the urge – I think I have about 8 Nucs created and most were last weekend. This weekend, I will create at least 8 more and the season will be truly off to a good start.

I believe this will be a stellar bee season for several reasons. I also believe lots and lots of bees will be swarming. I should post about that next.

Site Update: The site was hacked on March 17. For the first time in years, I finally get back to posting and managing this blog – then what happens? Some plugin gets a security vulnerability and a loser hacks me!!! At any rate, all is well now – I apologize to any inconvenience this may have caused anyone.

More Site Fixes!

Wow. This site is full of defects! Folks have been messaging me over the years, but I really didn’t realize how many things had stopped working! No doubt many have given up on me (I probably would have.)
The Contact Me form is now fixed. I probably need to do more tweaks to it, as I do not think it prevents the spammers at the moment. Regardless, it now works, along with the Swarm Report. I believe that I have also finally nailed down my site skin. Lots more to do, but the site is getting back on her feet!

Is This Queen Weak?

Now that mid-March has arrived, the season for the Bee Keeper in central Virginia is in full swing. My primary goals right now are to get honey supers on any hive that appears strong. I also want to note the hives that appear ready for Nuc creation (which starts in about a week, for me.) Of course, there are lots of prep tasks that are constantly taking place now (new frame and foundation creation, patching boxes (or, more likely, putting boxes in need of repair in my garage for future work – whenever time allows!!!)) and general equipment prep.)

First Visit to the Ruffin Bee Yard

Adding a honey super now is probably not the best idea for the normal hobby beekeeper. It’s probably better to shoot for early April for this task. I mainly start in mid-March because I have found that I can rarely get around to all of the hives in early April. So, to make sure all are ready on Tax Day, I start a month early. In truth, this probably slows down some of my hives (too much space to manage), but I have never seen a long term negative impact (maybe I get less honey than I normally would have, but I get enough honey as it is!) Why do I add honey supers? For honey, of course! But, it is a swarm management technique. Giving them that extra space now can keep some hives happy and out of the swarm mode as the nectar flow starts to pop.

I was also able to fully hive all but one of my overwintered Nucs this past weekend. I say it way too much, but these nucs really impress me. With the exception of a few swarms, I have never seen a build up like I see with overwintered Nucs at this time of year. I think the fact that I raise the queen in July (and sometimes August) means that she is born, gets to raise a few new bees and then the hive tells her to STOP for the Winter. She was just born and probably says “What the (*&(*&!!!!!”. She then waits all Winter and, once they give her the green light, she goes to town. At any rate, they really roll (and that’s why I have learned that they need to be fully hived in early March – this year, I am running behind a bit.)

But, I ran across one this past weekend that was definitely not popping. She was probably working 3 frames, max. If I combined all of the brood, I bet I could get it all onto one frame. These things frustrate me. Early on, when I was just observing and not messing with them, I had a couple of instances where a hive that appeared much slower than others, significantly outperformed its peers by May. In those days, I remember thinking they wouldn’t make it, but didn’t try to manage them (this was my “leave them bee and see what happens” phase), and was surprised to see that most did just fine. The queens simply like to start their build up later.

But, since then, I have had many experiences where weak queens never amount to much and the hive, eventually, peters out. I always wonder “if I had just killed the queen in late March, would the hive had recovered?” As of this moment, I am sticking with the “late bloomers” theory and letting them be. I did reduce them to only one Deep super and am hopeful they will be rolling by early March (unlikely, given normal Bee Math, but we shall see.)

Site Update: I have successfully implemented HTTPS, so everything is secure now. I am currently playing around with various themes. I do not recall being so particular, but nothing seems to suit my fancy at the moment. At any rate, next up on my list is fixing the Email and Contact forms.

Early March Beekeeping!

February is a month of great anticipation! I seem to have more energy and/or enthusiasm for getting ready for the Spring garden and, of course, the Flow than any other time of the year. February always has at least a day or two that pops up close to or above 60 and gives everyone a taste of Spring. The bees begin flying in earnest and beekeepers have their first real chance to go in and actually inspect a hive. It’s exciting thinking about what is coming in the next couple of months – it’s probably the most exciting time if you keep bees.

I personally do not feed my bees anymore, but I do think it is wise for the new beekeepers to feed any hives that seem light at this time of year. I would say that anything less than 5 medium frames of honey would be a problem in my book. It really doesn’t take a lot of honey at this time (I have had a full hive make it with only a bit over 1 full deep frame of honey in early February). Initially, I simply fed because I wanted to be sure to have bees. In year two, I was a little more selective and by year three, I was taking risks to see exactly how much honey they needed. Nowadays, I have a pretty good handle on the honey stores by December and I just need to lift the back of the hive (a weight check). Mistakes do happen, but they are very rare. My goal is always to keep feed away from my bees. I want them eating honey made from natural nectar!

So, besides doing weight checks and maybe playing with an Overwintered Nuc, I used almost all of February to get my gear ready. I plan to create/sell 15 Nucs, create 5 new hives and sell 15 existing hives. In addition, I want to swap out some of my older, drawn frames with frames of foundation. This means that I need to make sure that I have plenty of new frames ready and lots of hive boxes prepped. For whatever reason, it is a labor of love for sure. It is an exhilarating chore, preparing for March.

So, now that March is here, my first real activity takes place. I have found that Mar 1 (or the first period of decently warm Spring weather (maybe 3 days with highs at or above 50) is the best time to hive my overwintered Nucs. These Nucs always come out of Spring stronger than any bees that I am used to (maybe excluding a really strong swarm). I have to get them space in early March or they are guaranteed to swarm. The weather looks cold and wet right now, but I am confident that a good day will pop up shortly for me to begin my work.

Once that’s done, I hope to post here about my next task – Swarm Management and Nuc Creation!!! Bonzai!

Site Update: I have fixed several of the problems that had crept into the site due to months of inattention. There are several more, including the Mail engine and a couple of other items that need fixing. I also cleaned up the skin, but this needs tweaking as well. Bare with me:)