I'm getting very broody

There are a huge number of different types of hive but they are mostly variations on the 'box hive' where a larger lower brood box contains the queen and the smaller upper boxes called supers contain the honey for extraction. To prevent the queen from getting into the supers there is a queen excluder on top of the brood box that has slots small enough for the worker  bees to get into the supers to deposit honey but will not let the queen get through.
The most common type of hive in Europe is called the National but there are larger versions particularly in America.

A lot of commercial honey producers use larger hives to give the colony more space for the queen to lay eggs that increases the honey yield. Most beeks start with a National hive and to switch over to bigger hives can be an expensive and time consuming process. I know someone who switched from National hives to a bigger version with different sized frames and it took a couple of years and he was also left with a lot of useless National equipment.

However there are alternatives to changing all your equipment.
One is to adopt what is called 'brood and a half' This means a honey super is put on top of the brood box and the queen excluder put on top of the honey super. This increases the area for the queen to lay eggs by a half. Normal honey supers are put above the queen excluder.
Another is to go 'double brood' where you give the queen two brood boxes with a queen excluder above them and honey supers above the brood boxes.
The disadvantages of these methods is that it makes inspections more complicated and the thought of having 5 supers above two brood boxes and having to check the brood boxes isn't fun.

A couple of my colonies have two brood boxes but I've really got too many colonies to consider switching them all to another type of hive and was considering brood and a half.
Then an email arrived from the Association saying a bee keeper had equipment for sale And it was all National!
It can be a bit dangerous buying second hand equipment as you might not know why its being sold and the equipment could have disease.
However I knew the beek involved and he is an expert. He had also scorched the kit with a blow torch to kill any bugs.

I have 12 colonies that need another brood box.
He had twelve brood boxes.
He had even painted them the same colour I paint mine.

Yes I did.

Getting them is a bit of a opportunity for me.
Giving the colonies this extra space will reduce the possibility of them swarming which they do when the colony is filling the hive.
Also when I'm doing them I can take the opportunity to catch and mark the queens using the device I mentioned in a previous blog.
Finally it gives me the chance to change some of the skanky brood frames. Brood frames get very dirty with crap and general muck, and the pupae spin a chrysalis around them that is left behind when they hatch and the queen won't lay an egg in a cell unless its perfectly clean.  Because of this you are supposed to change a third of the frames each year and I have inherited two colonies that probably haven't had any hanged in years.

The down side is its a huge amount of hard work.
I'll let you know how I get on.