reversing hives: from natural beekeeping

7/29/2019 Reversing Hives: From Natural Beekeeping

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Organic Approaches to Modern ApicultureREVISED AND EXPANDED EDITIO N

m pNATURAL BE EK EE PI NG

ROSS CONRAD


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for the queen to lay eggs. When using a system

where the main hive consists of two shallow hiv

bodies with a deep hive body sandwiched betwee

them, the positions of the shallows are reversed.

the hive proper consists of two deep hive bodie

then the position of each deep is switched. In thmanagement system I use, this is how a shallo

overflow hive body ends up beneath the dee

hive body. The nuc or package of bees begins th

year in the deep hive body. By the time winter

approaching, the hive has a shallow (or two) o

honey above the deep box containing the broo

nest. In the spring, most of the bees are up in th

shallow and the deep is mostly empty, so the pos

tion of the boxes is reversed and the shallow on to

is now placed on the bottom. Given that the process of reversing a colony involves taking the hiv

apart, this is a good time to clean up the equipmen

a bit. The following is one example of how to g

about reversing, cleaning, and inspecting a hive i

early spring.

First of all, when you walk up to a hive, it is be

to approach from either the side or the rear of th

colony. Its not a good idea to position yourse

directly in front of a hive, because the foragers th

are coming and going from the front entrance ma

interpret your actions as trying to block their pat

and may feel threatened enough to defend the

turf with their stingers. After blowing some smok

into allthe entrances of the hive, lift the outer cov

and send a puff or two of smoke under the cov

before removing it. The idea is to let the smok

precede you as you go through the colony, in effe

announcing your presence before you arrive. Plac

the outer cover on the ground a couple feet behin

the hive with the bottom side up. After applyin

a puff of smoke to the bees gathered around thopening of the inner cover, use your hive tool to pr

up a corner of the top super or hive body. As you

hive tool lifts up the corner of the super, send som

smoke into the crack between the supers and con

tinue to pry up until you can stick the entire nos

of your smoker into the space between the boxe

This will allow you to remove the hive tool withou

if sugar and supplements are used over prolonged

periods. Common sense dictates that, like all

creatures, honey bees thrive on wholesome natural

foods, and they suffer when forced to consume the

equivalent of junk food. If protein supplementa-

tion is required, the natural approach, in keeping

with the honey bees biology, is to mix powdered

pollen with just enough honey so that it forms a

dough. Such a patty can be left inside the hive near

the brood area for utilization by the bees.

Reversing a hive is a technique used primarily

to reduce, but not eliminate, a colonys swarm-

ing impulse. Swarming is the act of reproductionwherein a single superorganism, in this case the

colony of bees, breaks into two groups and creates

a replica of itself. It is a natural survival instinct of

the speciesApis mellifera.

A number of factors are believed to influence

a colonys decision to swarm. Among them are: a

crowded hive lacking space for additional brood

rearing; an aging queen (two years old or older);

and an abundance of honey and pollen available to

foragers combined with insufficient storage space.

Preventing an early swarm helps to ensure that

the bees will have time to stow away enough honey

to last the winter before they divide themselves up

and thus reduce their nectar-gathering abilities.

This can be crucial during poor honey years when

the total amount of honey produced by the hive is

low. Reversing also provides an opportunity for the

beekeeper to conduct a thorough inspection of each

colony, so that potential issues may be resolved

before they become acute.

Just like it sounds, the process of reversing acolony simply involves restacking the boxes that

make up the hive so that the bottom hive body

ends up on the top, and vice versa. The intention

is to end up with the brood and honey positioned

as close to the bottom of the hive as possible, with

extra space above. The act of reversing a hive may

also break up the brood nest, creating more space


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the distance between the top bars of the frames in

the bottom box and the bottom bars of the frames

in the box above respect the bee space. This can

result in the frames below sticking to the frames

above when the boxes are being pried apart (see

Figure 3-22). When this occurs, bees get crushed

and the top box cannot be lifted off the hive. This

usually causes the beekeeper to drop the box back

down on the hive, squashing even more bees,

which results in the hive taking on an ugly mood.

Whenever you handle supers or hive bodies con-

taining bees, it is best to keep them as level as pos-

sible. When it is not possible or convenient to keep a

box full of bees in a horizontal position, it is impor-

tant to always tilt the hive section so that the shortend faces down toward the ground, thus prevent-

ing the frames from collapsing upon one another

If a nuc or hive body is carried or set down with one

of the long sides facing the ground, gravity will

force the frames together and in the process kill or

injure the bees that are unfortunate enough to get

pressed between the leaves of honey, like flowers in a

FIGURE 3-20.In northern climates, reversing the order of the hives chambers in spring, before they have become overcrowded, candelay the bees swarming instinct, helping to ensure that the colony will have the workforce available to store enough honey to seethem safely through the winter.

the two boxes coming back together and possibly

crushing some bees in the process. With the nose

of the smoker inserted between the supers, squeeze

the bellows a couple times while you reach over

with your free hand to the handhold on the raised

end of the upper chamber and lift it up. If the back

end of the top box is too close to the edge of the box

underneath it, you may have to slide the hive body

being lifted forward a bit to keep it from slipping

off the back end of the hive. After allowing some

smoke to drift over the exposed bees, the top super

with the inner cover still attached can now be lifted

off the hive and placed on the telescoping edges of

the outer cover that is on the ground, so that there is

little chance that the bees on the exposed undersidewill be crushed (see figure 3-24). If more than two

boxes make up the hive, repeat the procedure as

outlined for the top hive body and place the second

hive body off to the side, standing on end.

If a colony is ignored for too long and allowed to

become crowded, the bees will often build burr

comb between the boxes on the hive, even though


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FIGURE 3-21. A well-built smoker can aid the beekeeper by acting as a wedge that prevents supers from collapsing together oncseparated and crushing bees. .

FIGURE 3-22. When frames stick to inner covers or supers above, blow smoke between the supers (or super and inner cover) and pthe frames down away from the inner cover or super without dropping the box (or inner cover) and crushing more bees.


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possible. This way, the underutilized space withinthe hive is kept to a minimum, and your equipment

is used most efficiently, because the lions share of

the honey gathered will be stored above the brood

nest in preparation for winter. Sometimes you will

find that a colony that goes into winter with three

hive bodies will, by spring, have all their bees

brood, and honey confined to the uppermost story

of the hive. In this case the bottom hive body can

be taken away and the middle section placed on top

of the hive to provide the needed room for growth.

As a general rule, it is a good idea to match the size

of the cavity within which the colony is housed (the

hive) with the number of bees in the hive. Additional

space should not be added, in the form of a new hive

body or super, until the bees fill up most of the space

they already have. For example, if a hive consists of

four frames of bees and brood and six empty frames

in a ten-frame hive body, then adding another ten-

frame hive body on top would be tantamount to

moving a four-person family into a mansion with

20 rooms. The additional unused space is not onlyunnecessary given that they still have six frames to

expand into, but the extra work of patrolling and

maintaining the space in the additional hive body

can actually be detrimental to the colony.

Positioning the free space within the hive on

top simplifies the process of inspecting the colony

in the future, since all it takes is a peek under the

FIGURE 3-24.The bees appreciate it when the beekeeper makesuse of an inverted outer cover to prevent bees from beingcrushed and grass, dirt, and debris from getting all over thehives boxes and frames when separated.

book. If the queen is one of the victims, the hive may

well suffer a lethal blow at the beekeepers hand.

Once the hive body sitting on the bottom board

has been removed, scrape the bottom board clean of

dirt and debris before returning it to its place as the

floor of the colony. Now you are ready to rebuild the

hive by replacing the hive bodies in reverse order

as compared to their previous position. Unless the

colony is exceptionally strong, or youre late in get-

ting around to reversing them, the former bottom

portion of the hive will likely contain few bees, littlehoney, and no brood. Next to the bottom board is

precisely where you dontwant additional space to

be within the hive. Because the bees natural incli-

nation is to move upward, an empty hive body or

super should be located on top of the hive, and the

boxes filled with the most honey, pollen, bees, and

brood should be positioned as low in the hive as

FIGURE 3-23. Allow a super to slip off the hive during an inspec-tion, and the fun really begins.


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new supers of extra-thin foundation, or frames th

allow for naturally drawn comb, are added belo

the full supers to reduce the incidence of trav

stain that occurs when bees constantly wa

across the filled and sealed combs to get to the ne

foundation above. This occurs in much the sam

way that dirt builds up on carpeting in high-traff

areas of your home. By positioning the new super

below the previously filled ones, the appearance o

the final comb honey harvest is greatly improved

Incidentally, queens generally prefer to lay theeggs in the larger spans of comb found in the dee

hive bodies rather than in the smaller shallow o

medium-sized supers. Nevertheless, this prefer

ence will not stop the queen from laying in shallo

supers, especially if the brood nest becomes con

gested and additional space for egg laying become

difficult to find. Although it is inconvenient t

FIGURE 3-25.Allowing the frames of a hive body to collapse together is a good way to squash a queen.

inner cover to tell whether additional room is

needed. Once a colony has filled all but the out-

ermost frames in the top super or hive body, an

empty super should be placed on top to provide

additional space. Back in the old days, beekeepers

placed empty supers just above the brood nest and

beneath the honey supers that the hive had already

filled. This is because the bees will tend to draw

out foundation and fill empty combs located in

the middle of the hive a little faster than when they

are placed at the very top of the colony. Neverthe-less, the disruption to the colony, not to mention

the labor involved with checking the supers and

removing and replacing the full honey supers

every time an empty super needed to be added,

eventually caused this approach to be discontinued

in favor of supering from the top. The one excep-

tion is during the production of comb honey, when


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A major concern with keeping bees in northern

locations is winter survival, but I think far too

much attention is given to concerns about the cold

temperatures that the hive will have to endure. As

long as the hive is strong and healthy with plenty of

adult bees and brood, has an abundance of sealed

honey stored in the combs, and is able to stay dry,

it should have little trouble withstanding the frosty

breath of Old Man Winter. Honey bees are very

intelligent. Rather than trying to keep the entire

interior of the hive warm, the honey bee cluster

serves to focus and conserve the colonys energy by

keeping warm the minimum space necessary for

survival. They do this by warming only the area of

the hive that they are occupying. The temperature

of the rest of the hive interior is not that different

from the ambient temperature outside the hive. As

such, I find most efforts to insulate and wrap hives

to be a waste of time. If I kept my bees in a climate

colder than USDA plant hardiness zone 4a, where

it typically gets down to about -25F -32C) for

a maximum of a week or two each winter, then I

might view the practice of wrapping or packing

hives with insulation differently. As it is, I have

never wrapped or packed my hives for winter,

and yet, even since the arrival of varroa mites, I

can achieve good overwintering results by simply

focusing on the three key ingredients of winter

survival: strong, healthy colonies; plenty of honey

stores; and dry bees.

Because I have already covered ways to ensure

a strong, populous colony with plenty of honey

stores for winter and I will go into these topics in

even more detail later on), I will focus here on the

issue of moisture within the hive. A secure, water-

proof outer cover and hive bodies that are solid and

tight-fitting are the hives primary defenses against

moisture. Many beekeepers will use a rock or brick

to weigh down the outer cover so that strong winter

winds will not pry the cover loose, flinging it aside

and allowing precipitation to enter. This usually

find brood in your honey supers, it is a healthy

thing to allow the queen all the room she requires

to lay her eggs. A gentle way of encouraging the

mother queen to keep her brood confined to the

lower part of the hive, without forcing her by using

a queen excluder, is to start off the honey superingprocess with shallow supers. Because the bees will

be more likely to fill a shallow super with nectar,

rather than eggs, two or three shallows should be

built up upon the colony before any deep honey

supers are used. The relatively large span of sealed

honey provided by several filled and capped shal-

low honey supers acts as a natural queen excluder

and discourages the queen from crossing all that

honey to lay eggs in a distant part of the hive.

Getting back to our hive reversal process: Priorto placing the top hive body, which is chock-full of

bees and honey and still has the inner cover attached

to it, on the bottom board, the bottom of the frames

of the hive body should be scraped clean of all burr

comb. Care must be taken to scrape off burr comb

and brace comb clear down to the wood, since any

wax remaining will act as foundation and provide

the bees with guidance and motivation for rebuild-

ing in the same location. If you find your hive tool is

gouging and peeling off layers of wood while scrap-

ing your equipment clean, your tool may be too

sharp. Dragging the sharply honed end of the hive

tool along a rock or brick a dozen times or so will dull

the edge enough so that, when held at the proper

angle, it will remove wax and debris without strip-

ping off the wood underneath like a planing tool. By

taking the time to thoroughly clean burr comb off

the frames and other areas of the hive early in the

season, a lot of trouble and inconvenience can be

avoided later on. As with the process of cleaning up

dead hives, a significant amount of beeswax can becollected for rendering by scraping burr comb from

the tops and bottoms of the frames into a box before

setting the hive bodies and supers back into place.

This also helps to prevent the crushing of many bees

when repositioning the hive bodies on their stand.

You would be surprised at how much beeswax can

be collected from a hive during such a process.

reversing hives: from natural beekeeping

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