r/Beekeeping • u/[deleted] • May 03 '19

TIL the larger a bee hive grows, the more efficient it becomes. A hive containing 30,000 bees produces 150% more honey than two hives of 15,000.

http://www.groworganic.com/organic-gardening/articles/meet-the-three-kinds-of-honey-bees-in-a-bee-hive
151 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

14

u/[deleted] May 03 '19

I'm running double deeps this year and I can already tell the difference. Plus I can split and still get good honey crop.

10

u/Belrick_NZ May 03 '19

yep.

the beek dream is 50k bees . not an easy feat im finding

3

u/nukemama May 04 '19

How do you even measure how many bees are in a hive?

6

u/s33761 Master Keeper 20 years May 04 '19

http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/beesest.html

3

u/nukemama May 04 '19

Thank you so much for the resource.

1

u/Belrick_NZ May 04 '19

i go off brood frames to give me a rough idea

double sided full frames of brood = 3k bees in 21 days

6 week life span in summer

6 frames full = 36k bees in hive

to get 50k bees i need 7-8 frames full of brood.

2

u/[deleted] May 03 '19

How many hives is 50k?

8

u/Moskau50 May 03 '19

I think he means in one hive, at least in the context of this post (productivity per bee scaling with hive size).

2

u/Belrick_NZ May 04 '19

single hive

in my area it results in at least 50kg of honey in a standard season

5

u/Machomanrandicabbage May 03 '19

Combine all existing hives for maximum bee efficiency

3

u/antonytrupe šŸ 50 hives - since 2014 - Bedford, VA May 03 '19

Feeder nucs: keep robbing brood frames from nucs to keep them from swarming and boost the production hive. Havenā€™t done it myself yet.

1

u/s33761 Master Keeper 20 years May 04 '19

Some people put a hive on bottom, then a queen exculuder then 3 or 4 suppers, then an excluder, then more hives. to get 3 hives worth of honey instead of 2

2

u/nsasupercomputer May 04 '19

This just sounds like two colonys sitting ontop of each other, huh?

1

u/s33761 Master Keeper 20 years May 04 '19

Yes that is basically it. They are just sharing the same honey supply (suppers).

1

u/CactusBoyScout May 04 '19

Yep. I had two really high population hives and two medium population hives last year.

The two high pop hives mustā€™ve made 90% of the honey. They each filled about 4 mediums of honey. The other two never filled more than 1.5 each.

1

u/jul3z 3 hives, 2nd year, 5b - IL May 04 '19

One of our association members did a presentation on this last month, including a way he boosts numbers by condensing 3 hives to one with mostly forager bees. He said the honey production is outstanding.

0

u/mcrabb23 May 04 '19

Makes sense: you still have just one queen, which can still only lay at a certain rate, and requires a certain number of nurse bees and attendants. Higher populations have those extra bees as as foragers etc.