When Would You Have 3 Deep Brood Boxes?

[sarafina]

One-year beekeeper here still learning......

I have seen pictures of hives with more than 2 deep brood boxes and wondered if anybody here had more than 2 and if so - why?

[c10250]

I have three.  I'm using the top one as a honey super.

[sarafina]

Is that always the case when I see more than 2 deeps?  The ones above the 2 deeps are really honey supers?

Would you ever want to run 3 deeps if the bees got crowded and you didn't want to make a split?

[Hethen57]

I've heard of Beeks doing it, but the practical limitation is the height of the stack.  3 deeps of brood would contain and produce alot of bees, which would theoretically make alot of honey, which would require a fairly tall stack of supers.  It would be a very strong hive, but a chore to inspect and work.

[Kathyp]

i have done it, but the hight is an issue.  i didn't want to split the hive.  don't remember why.  maybe it was getting late. 

anyway, there is nothing wrong with it and you can cram them down in the fall.  if it's early enough and you want to, you can make a split.  some hives just explode and you have to make choices about how to manage them.

[Tucker1]

I have a hive with three brood boxes and three supers right now.  It's a pain to work and one of the brood boxes is really a partial honey super (A heavy one).  It's difficult to work. I kinda backed into the situation that I have, trying to avoid a swarm and having problems with the girls not wanting to moving into my supers.  It's a long story.  I'll need to fix it this fall. The one up side to it is that the hive is very strong and hasn't swarmed.  If I was 6" tall working the hive would be easier. I'll avoid this next year, that's for sure.

Regards
Tucker

[doak]

It is berry, berry hard to "muscle" out 90+ pounds.
Even for a macho Rambo.
Height and weight  tell me not to go that route.
Hard enough for me on the medium super when they get high.
Year before last I had one that was 3 deep and 4 medium high.
The 4 mediums and one deep was honey.
I put the 3rd deep on anticipating the movement of queen to the deep.
She did and then went back down and the bees back filled with pure honey, no pollen.
That was the year I collected over six hundred pounds of honey from 12 colonies.
Then lost 7 out of the 12 that fall and spring. Guess I worked the poor gals to death. :roll:doak

[wetland bee]

I run all deeps. Most hives our 4 high by the end of season mid July. This works well for the person that is expanding. all frames our always the same size.My extractor holds 10 deep frames.

[1of6]

I've tried running some in 3 deep with mixed results.  In the years that I've tried it, it seemed like a boomer colony like this really needed a lot of overhead in the way of resources to support that big of a colony, and it seemed like my 2-deeps outproduced my 3-deeps.  I know this goes against common logic, but it's what I saw when I tried it.  3-deeps are great for pulling splits from, and it's nice not having to go down into that bottom brood box.  In my case, the 3rd deep gets backfilled during the summer if you don't rotate empty comb into it too.

Try it if you'd like and compare results with your 2-deeps.  Results with this approach will vary depending on many factors including location, type of bees that you have, forage availability & weather, amount of time that you have to invest on management, temperament of bees, hive ventilation techniques, alignment of the planets, whether or not you paid your taxes on time, etc. 

See how it works for you and let everyone here know what your results were.