Two-family beehives
With the two-semen content of the bees, the 12-frame Dadan-Blatt hive is divided into a thin partition into two compartments, which contain two families of bees on six frames throughout the year. Care for them does not differ significantly from the usual.
At the end of winter and early spring, a follow-up inspection is carried out. Unemployed families are given uteruses or unite them with full-fledged families, clean donja, determine the stocks of feed. If necessary, replace the honeycomb honeycomb with half-honeycomb or feed sugar syrup.
Other measures are carried out, but the most important is the improvement of the thermal conditions of families.
In the hive, where the two families spent the winter, much depends on how strong they will be at the beginning of the beekeeping season. The most successful work is where bees cover five or more frames. They develop much faster if they have high-quality uterus and there is a lot of protein feed. In this case, it is not necessary to carry out stimulating fertilizing.
If after a wintering in a two-session beehive, bees occupy less than five streets, the nests restrict and leave as many honeycombs as bees cover, spend stimulating top dressing with sugar syrup, open honey in honeycombs, etc. Expand the nests only with dark honeycombs, and when warm – light and frames with a wax.
The beekeeper needs to closely monitor the development of the two families in the spring, and when all the streets in both are filled with bees, without expecting the onset of honey picking, put the first store extension. Usually this occurs 15-20 days before the same operation with families, where one uterus works. If at this time there is a bribe, then the bees put the nectar into the extension, and below all the honeycombs are filled with brood.
After the same time, the magazine extensions are placed on beehives in which one family has
Remove the septum in the store when a lot of bees accumulate in the nest and warm weather sets in.
In the apiary it is good to have both normal and two-family families. This makes it easy to reinforce the latter.
Before staging store supplements over the broiler part of the hives, a separation grid is installed, not allowing the uterus to go to the general store and meet. It is impossible to put the extensions on hives early, since the brood portion, which is not filled with bees, can cool. The smell of two families in one hive can be different if in nature there are bribes of nectar and pollen.
The second superstructure is set when the first is filled with bees, not expecting it to be filled with nectar. If all the frames of the first extension are filled with nectar, then a new one is placed under it. If the cells of the first extension are not filled with nectar, then the second can be put on the first. They are replaced in places after filling the nectar with the first magazine extension. When both store extensions are filled with honey, put the third.
The swarming of bees in a two-month hive can be prevented by putting on-time magazine extensions. If this does happen, then usually two swarms come out of one beehive. Often there is one common big swarm with two or more uterus.
At the end of the summer, when the nights become cold, one of the two extensions is removed. Later (in preparation for wintering), remove and others. Then conduct a basic inspection of the two-family hives. Record in the notebook data for each family: whether there is a uterus, its quality, as well as the strength of families, the presence of brood, feed stocks. According to my observations, in two-family hives, about 10% of families remain without queens. Each uterus is given a uterus from the nucleus. To hope that bees will lead out to themselves a fistula, as a rule, it is not necessary. Feeling the presence of the uterus in the next compartment, they are not in a hurry to delay the queen cells. Fistulous uterus, withdrawn after removal of supplements, usually substandard.
The situation is also not quite safe with the food reserves in the nests of the two-family hives. Bees put honey in the store extensions, and in the brood of the nest (below) it almost never happens, so you have to feed such families with sugar syrup or give them honeycomb with honey from a warehouse or from other families.
In some cases in two-family hives the honeycombs are so full of honey that the oviposition of the queens is limited, and the strength of families is reduced. In this case, honey from two or three honeycombs is pumped out and returned to the nest or the complete honeycombs are replaced with empty honey. This gives the uterus a place to work.
In the absence of a bribe, incentive top dressing is carried out with sugar syrup. This is also useful if there is no late bribe. If this is not done, then in the spring on the apiary the weak families in three or four streets will prevail. Working with them is very laborious and not always good results are obtained from activities aimed at rapidly increasing their strength. It is disadvantageous for a beekeeper to keep two weak families in one hive, but it is better to unite them or use them as a family with an assisting uterus. In all cases, we must pay special attention to the quality of the queens.
If the beekeeper in autumn holds all the necessary measures, then in winter he will have at least 80-90% of strong families with at least five streets. Strong families in hives for two families usually winters without the restriction of nests, that is, on a six-frame basis. They should have at least 9 kg of honey. In the spring it is much easier to work with two-family hives than with a separate family.
The main thing is to perform all the above operations on time. This can be achieved if in the autumn have enough time to work in the apiary. Note that the question of time is the weakest place when keeping bees in two-family hives.
The second important condition for the successful keeping of two families in one hive is the experience of the beekeeper. There are jobs that a young or inexperienced beekeeper can not handle. Therefore, there is disappointment in this method. In addition, great importance is forage. If the feed is scarce and the weather is not conducive to honey collecting, the two-family families will barely harvest their food for the winter. Under these conditions, they sometimes have less food reserves than with normal maintenance.
Consequently, success can be achieved only if the feed is more or less good.
Medosbor two powerful families, housed in one hive, higher than that of an ordinary family.
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