Prospects for the use of beehives for six frames

A six-frame hive in beekeeping practice is used to keep bees, including their wintering, in order to get ready-made packages and queens for sale. It is also suitable as a booster hive, allowing families to quickly build up their strength and thereby increase the apiary.

The content of the article

• 1 Getting quality queens
• 2 Use for wintering layers
• 3 Trap

Getting quality queens

The 6-frame hive allows for a better quality queen thanks to more bees.

There are many ways to raise queens. Each of the beekeepers chooses the most suitable one in his opinion. This could be the popular use of micro-cores or dividing the hull into several one- or two-frame sections. In this way, you can simultaneously get up to 40 queens from one hive, which is a fairly good result.

But here it is necessary to turn to the biology of bees, which clearly proves why the volume of the nucleus should be larger than the standard micro size.

In nature, bee colonies do not multiply in small handfuls. And even if this happens, for example, the fifth swarm comes out, such a small family will most likely be doomed to perish. Because the swarm is not capable of normal life with such a small number of adults.

Of course, you can get a high-quality uterus that meets all the requirements for a particular breed in a micro-nucleus. But in the future, the female will be “spoiled” by the very approach to her rearing.

The queen flies out on the first flight approximately on the fifth day after leaving the queen cell. Until this moment, she should be in a comfortable environment for her. For the correct formation of all systems of her body, it is necessary to receive a complete feed. The “queen” is fed by healthy bees. And to solve the problem of feeding, to ensure normal care before flying, only 150 grams of bees are really enough.

Then, within 48 hours after the flight, the assimilation of the drone sperm obtained as a result of mating continues in the uterus.

If at this moment the required temperature, the amount of bees and feed are not provided, the mechanism for pumping sperm into the sperm cell will fail. Accordingly, instead of absorbing the necessary microliter of semen, the uterus absorbs only half of this dose.

This happens if the beekeeper “took pity on the bees” for the queen who returned from the flight. Moreover, the bees must be of good quality – first of all, of sufficient size, with the necessary vital energy. So that they can not only continue caring for the “queen”, but also warm the brood well.

In a micro-nucleus, at the beginning of the laying of eggs by the queen, 150 grams of bees are not able to provide the next generation with the optimal temperature, humidity and quality nutrition. As a result of a decrease in temperature, small insects appear from the eggs, which live instead of the prescribed 40 days, at best twenty and can feed the same small bee after themselves.

The beekeeper gets a generation unable to care for the next queen. Accordingly, to solve this problem, two queens are obtained in the micro-nucleus. Then they take all the bees and shake them out. And the nucleus is repopulated. In Russia, unfortunately, this approach is widespread.

But in Europe, for example in Germany, every time every queen is provided with a young, healthy, full-fledged bee. To free the micro-core, all bees are shaken off into the hive and at their expense, the cores are repopulated. This method is based on the scientific fact that good queens can only be obtained if the apiary contains only full-fledged insects.

Another plus of six-frame hives is associated with the settlement of cores in the spring. The beekeeper must shake off the bees, keep them in the cold (cellar, basement) so that the insects cool down, get used to the queen, and she flies around safely. All this is a rather laborious process that requires constant attention from the beekeeper.

To get rid of unnecessary hassle and get the highest quality queens, you can use the Finnish bee box hive for two mattresses and a full frame (there are models for the frame of the root, dadan and 160 mm) or the domestic model Nizhegorodets, Lyson.

This design allows the queen to have a sufficient number of bees. On three frames of one mat, more than 400 grams of insects are placed, capable of reproducing a physiologically full-fledged generation after themselves. And the beekeeper saves himself the extra work of caring for a small nucleus.

Such a hive allows you to strengthen other colonies at the expense of the printed brood. Instead, dryness is established – the uterus continues to sow, or foundation.

Use for wintering layers

Advantages of the full-frame six-frame design:

• the possibility of using frames for honey during honey collection;
• the possibility of strengthening other nests due to brood;
• an opportunity not to rush to sell the reared queens;
• the ability to make layering at any suitable time;
• enough insects to raise quality queens and a new generation of bees.

In addition, two queens winter well in such hives. For this, the core is built up for winter and a dividing board is installed. In the spring, two clubs give a full-fledged bee package on three frames.

Important: in cold climates, bee colonies of three frames do not develop well in wooden hives. Warm structures made of expanded polystyrene and polyurethane foam are devoid of this drawback. The listed materials retain heat well. Bees do not waste energy and food to maintain the optimal temperature in the nest.

All bee houses are located close to each other during wintering. This is done so that they are not blown by the winds. And bee colonies do not separate to keep warm in the hive until a certain moment.

In the spring, the bees are fed until each nest has two frames of printed brood. When two frames are sealed, they are resettled in separate houses, food and sushi are dispensed. As a result, by the beginning of May, each three-frame layering becomes a full-fledged family of 6 frames, which it is desirable to expand with six more frames. That will make it possible to get a new 20-frame family by May 30-12.

Note: Such a rapid build-up of strength is possible due to the presence of last year’s August queens, which entered the prime of egg-laying (7-8 months after leaving the queen cell).

Ideally, the “queens” change annually, since due to the use of chemicals (especially if the medicine is left in the nest for the whole winter), the number of sperm in the sperm cell of the uterus decreases. For example, this is the effect of strips from the Varroa mite containing amitraz – they affect not only the uterus, but also the sperm of drones.

For layering and bee packages, a 6-frame hive can also be used as follows:

1. One brood and one feed frame is installed in it. The queen cell is given at the exit.
2. After the flight of the uterus during the summer period (from June to August), the strength of the layer increases.
3. A full-fledged six-frame family goes straight into the winter without changes.
4. The bee colony leaves wintering with a young queen, which flew around at the beginning of last June. Experience shows that by May there will be up to 5 brood frames in such a hive.
5. To form a package, three brood frames are removed, and feed combs with bees are added. In this form, the family can be sold.
6. Then, to the remaining 1-2 combs with brood, a feeding frame and a queen cell are given at the exit. The result is a continuous cycle adapted for the sale of batch bees.

The same method is suitable for small apiaries that require enlargement. The family (accelerating hive) develops starting from three frames. As it increases, it is moved to a six-frame house, and then a ten- or twelve-frame house.

Trap

To make a 6-frame bee trap, it is better to use light materials: plywood 4 mm thick and slats 45 by 20 or 20 by 20-25 mm.

The assembly of the carrying trap is carried out as follows:

1. On the inner surface of the front and rear walls, a rail is screwed 1,5 cm from the upper cut, which will serve as a stop for the hangers.
2. A tap hole with a diameter of 30 mm is drilled in the front wall. If necessary, you can plug it with a homemade cork made of wood.
3. The side walls are screwed to the front and rear with self-tapping screws.
4. The bottom is a rectangular piece of plywood. A lid is assembled from the same piece and slats, which is hung on the hinges.
5. If the bees are transported in this box, a ventilation hole is made from the back.
6. In the last step, a nylon strap is attached to the body for easy portability.

Here is a rough assembly diagram:

We do not give the exact dimensions of the trap, since it all depends on the frames used. In any case, knowing the principles of assembly and design, it is easy to calculate the dimensions.

For example, a trap of this size can hold up to eight frames:

From chipboard, the structure turns out to be more cumbersome. And the plywood version can be successfully used as a carrier, because the swarm time ends with the beginning of the main bribe.

But at the same time, do not forget that plywood does not provide good thermal insulation – it is stuffy inside the bees. Here they can only be temporarily and subject to good ventilation in the summer heat. By the way, the swarms avoid the cramped dwellings. And a temporary six-frame hive box can lose to an eight-frame box in this regard.