Topic: adapted 'national ' brood frame in one of my 'commercial' bee hives

[tonybloke]

here's me examining one of my hives today, showing how I adapted some national brood frames to stop the brace comb build up in a commercial hive.
I left one frame shallow, to encourage drone comb
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcbkxjWYWZM

[Robert_Brenchley]

I don't know what commentary there is, if any, as my machine isn't plaing sound from IE at the moment for some strange reason. If I downloaded the clip and played it from the hard drive it would be fine, and I don't understand why. But never mind. That's a healthy looking frame. The bees are nice and quiet, but they usually are when there aren't so many bees in the box. The test is when it grows into a big colony!

[tonybloke]

Thanks for the comment, Robert !
yes the bees are nice and gentle, they come from good stock, from Paul Metcalf, Norfolk.
 I wanted to show how I had adapted national frames to fit my commercial 16 x 10 brood box.
I am still on the practical beekeeping course at  Easton college, and get to manipulate several different hives each week, most of them are all different types, as this is a teaching apiary. there are bees in a skep, nationals, commercials, dadants, langstroths, WBC's plus a few rare types of hive from history.some have already got five supers on!! (motor on extractor blew, and Paul thinks 'on the hive' is the best place to keep supers ready for extraction) all but one of the hives are very well behaved, and this one is up for re-queening.
It's a steep learning curve, ain't it? ;)

[Robert_Brenchley]

Very steep. It took me several years, but you've got expert advice to hand so you've got no excuse! You've got some drones coming on that frame which is usually a good sign. As long as you've got drones you can raise a new queen any time you need to.