Rotating Hive Bodies for Winter Shutdown?

[Bill the Beekeeper]

I'm a newbie this year, and have two hives.

An ex-beekeeper friend (an old guy and a bit forgetful) said that he thinks that right now we should switch the brood hive body with the second hive body right above it. Is this correct?  

Or should I just switch some of the frames with brood (that are located in the hive body above the brood hive body) with the frames in the brood hive body that don't have brood anymore.

What do you guys do?  Nothing?  Switch some frames? Rotate the brood hive body with the one above it?

Help please.

[Finman]

I'm a newbie this year, and have two hives.

An ex-beekeeper friend (an old guy and a bit forgetful) said that he thinks that right now we should switch the brood hive body with the second hive body right above it. Is this correct?  

Or should I just switch some of the frames with brood (that are located in the hive body above the brood hive body) with the frames in the brood hive body that don't have brood anymore.

What do you guys do?  Nothing?  Switch some frames? Rotate the brood hive body with the one above it?

Help please.

You live in warmer climate tahn we do. Our tree leaves are now dropped and I quess that your drop a month later and your willows starts to bloom at the end of March? If so, you winter is 2 months shorter than we have.

Just now you have 47 F and we have the same in southern Finland.

In Finland we put brood in the lower box, so we can give 40 lbs sugar for winter food. Bees can put sugar easily in the upper box and cap it fast. In the lower box winterfood is not necessary to cap all, if they sonsume it and they move open food to the empty cells where bees had hatched last.

Where is the last brood, there bees starts the winter ball.

When bees starts winter, it is usefull, that is in the lower box. During winter ball eat and move uppwards.

If it starts wintering from top, and if it come very cold weather, ball shrink smaller. If food is down in the cold, they are not able to move on the food fraems. Bees do not know, where their food is.

Uppwards they can move when food cells are empty in the place of ball.

At sping it is usefull, that the rest food is in upper bow andd bees have wrma thre to start brood raising.



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[Kris^]

I reversed my brood boxes last weekend.  The queen was in the upper box along with some capped brood and a little bit of capped honey; the lower box was essentially empty.  So it was a no-brained for my hive.  Now they have a complete deep available to store the syrup I'm feeding them and it didn't mean re-arranging their setup in the box where the queen was still active.

-- Kris

[Finman]

I reversed my brood boxes last weekend.  The queen was in the upper box along with some capped brood and a little bit of capped honey; the lower box was essentially empty.  So it was a no-brained for my hive.  Now they have a complete deep available to store the syrup I'm feeding them and it didn't mean re-arranging their setup in the box where the queen was still active.

-- Kris

How is your space for winter? is it possible to put the colony into one box?

Bees are waiting for winter if they have only few capped brood, and not larvas.

You can try. You shake bees in front of hive and if they go all inside, it is allright. Then 60% sugar  about 16-20 liter, or as much they take. It take one week to feed them.

After that you must give accid handling against mites.

If you give acid handling during feeding, they may stop capping sugar.