Double brooding can provide an advantage, but it comes with its downsides as well. If you decide to double brood in hopes of improving swarm control, you must understand that this practice will result in a significantly larger colony.
Adding an additional brood box instead of a super will not only double the space within your hive but also double the volume the bees must keep warm. This is a crucial consideration you must not overlook; if the bees lack the strength to keep that space warm, they will struggle and will not expand as you would expect them to.
Lets look at the pros and cons of double brooding:
Pro’s
- May help with swarm control
- Will give more room for the queen to lay, thereby generating a bigger colony which should result in more honey
- Gives the potential for fewer inspections
- Allows the brood nest to develop in a more natural way and will enable more honey stores within the brood area, which will assist with winter stores
- Facilitates colony expansion as you can split the boxes once both have brood and simply add a queen
Con’s
- Can be more difficult to manage, especially for a beginner
- Finding a queen in a double brood box can be much more challenging
- The colony will be significantly larger, resulting in handling a lot more bees
- More honey will be stored in the brood boxes, making them much heavier to lift during inspections
- Makes moving the colonies more difficult
- Requires more equipment
- Increases the height of the colony for lifting boxes and off
Double brooding is not for everyone; it results in heavier boxes to lift, taller bee hives and a lot more bees to handle. While it is not the ultimate solution for swarm control, it may provide you with more time before you need to implement swarm prevention strategies.
If you aim to expand your colony numbers, double brooding is certainly an effective strategy to achieve this.
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