When it comes to adding a second brood box to your hive, you might have heard that there are two different ways of doing it. You can either add an empty box to the top of your existing brood box, or you can put the new box at the bottom, and the queen will move down into it. But why would you want to do that?
Well, it’s actually all about the queen.
You see, the queen is a big girl. She’s a lot bigger than a normal worker bee, and she’s a lot longer too. That means she needs a lot more room to move around.
At the same time, she’s a lot more fragile. She doesn’t have a stinger, for example, and her wings are too small to fly. She’s not even able to feed herself. The worker bees have to feed her all the time.
That’s why the queen doesn’t move around that much. Sure, she’ll move around a bit, but she’s very sedentary compared to the worker bees. They’re the ones that bring her food, and they’re the ones that look after her.
So, it makes sense to give her as much room as possible, so that she can lay as many eggs as possible.
This is where having a brood box full of worker brood comes in. If you’ve given your queen plenty of space, then she’ll lay eggs inside the new brood box, and the worker bees will move the eggs down into the old brood box and look after them.
The new brood box will be full of worker brood, and the queen will have moved down into the old brood box. At this point, you can just take away the old brood box and put it to the side.
If the queen hasn’t moved down into the new brood box yet, then you can just give her a bit more time. The worker bees will eventually coax her down into it.
I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth mentioning again that you should never move the old brood box somewhere else. There’s no point, and it’s just a waste of time. The worker bees will move out of it eventually, and if you’ve put it somewhere else, then you’ll have to move it back to the hive and coax the worker bees back into the hive.
The truth is, you can’t do beekeeping halfheartedly. You have to be prepared to put in the time and effort. That’s why I’m telling you to just give it time.
Your best bet is to wait until the worker bees have moved out of the old brood box, and then just leave it somewhere away from the hive. They’ll eventually rob all the honey from it, and then you can take it away.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t move the old brood box after your bees have moved out of it. I’m just saying that it’s not worth it.
There’s no reason to move it. It’s not going to attract any bees or anything. It’s just a box.
Anyway, let’s get back to the point.
The point of this is that if you didn’t have a second brood box, then your queen wouldn’t have anywhere to lay any eggs, and you wouldn’t have a second brood box full of worker brood.
What happens is that the worker bees eventually stop producing royal jelly, and they just start producing worker jelly instead. At that point, you’re not going to get any more queens in your hive. You’re going to be queenless, and your hive will die out.
That’s why you need a second brood box. It’s not just for the extra space, but also for raising more queens. You’ll need them for when your current queen gets old.