Kerkhof hive

[karen]

This season want to set up a Kerkhof hive that someone gave me. It is a 2 queen system. There are two six frame sets of boxes on the same bottom board, opposite entrances. The bees work shared supers that are 13 frames. The queen excluder has a hinge in the middle so you can open one side at a time. It is all with 6 5/8" equipment. I have two hives but probably will only set one up.

This hive was designed by Canadian Herman Kerkhof. There is a complex ventilation system throughout the hive with double walls and a bottom board that is peaked in the center. In the photo you can see the screened vents in the bottom which are at the center of the bottom board where the peak is. I believe this is gets the air flow up through the double walls. The top is ventilated too but with the cover on you can’t see it.

I will start each side from May splits.

Two drawn backs I have read is if one side swarms the other side does too, should not be a problem the first season. The other was if the queen should find a way to get into the double wall she may tend to run there every time the hive is open so you never see her. I will have to make sure everything is tight before putting bees in the boxes. These had some popularity in the late 70’s and through the 80’s. I read upper NY state had a following. They have good nectar flows compared to here. I can always break it down and use the boxes as nucs if I do not like it. I will always have to have an empty box to hang frames in when I inspect these boxes, once I establish the hives I should not have to get into the brood area often so I should be fine. Not sure which yard to put it in.

The patent
http://brevets-patents.ic.gc.ca/opic-ci ... mmary.html

[Vance G]

Sounds kinda convoluted but the bees probably won't mind. There is a Canadian commercial outfit in Manitoba and on their site http://www.frenchbeefarm.com is an article about two queens in a divided standard deep sharing honey supers over an excluder and wintering with a shared block of fondant. I experimented with six of these paired nucs and produced a fair amount of honey with them. After I extracted I gave them a second divided box and fed them full with a shared miller feeder over an excluder. I will run them as singles this year.

[Allen Dick]

Various hive configurations for allowing multiple colonies to share supers have been contrived and they do work. Think of them as variations on the two-queen idea that do not involve having one queen's domain above the other which is a huge nuisance when brood checks are required.

The main advantages are in solving three of beekeepings big problems: conserving equipment, queen failure, and maintaining viable cluster size.

When supers are shared, the issue of having empty supers on an under-performing hive while having too few on a better one nearby is solved.

If one queen fails, all the bees continue to work and maintain morale.

With several colonies working together, heat is maintained in supers and the cluster is less likely to withdraw to the brood area in cool spells.

That said, there are issues with the more complex arrangement and huge populations and monster swarms are a possibility. Prompt extracting is required and weak or faint-hearted beekeepers may be daunted by the vast combined populations.

One of the more interesting such arrangements I saw was here on Vancouver Island. Babe's Honey, a commercial outfit, placed eight standard hives on each pallet and they all shared the supers.

[karen]

One of the more interesting such arrangements I saw was here on Vancouver Island. Babe's Honey, a commercial outfit, placed eight standard hives on each pallet and they all shared the supers.

That is something I would like to see.

Prompt extracting is required and weak or faint-hearted beekeepers may be daunted by the vast combined populations.

I think, at this point, my goal is for them to draw out frames for 6 5/8 boxes. I have found that 3 boxes are working out better than 2 for wintering over. In the past my hive configuration has been 2 deeps. I am now finding it is a lot less labor (candyboards) and worry in the winter to have that extra 6 5/8 box of honey on the hives. I hope to get the bees in the Kerkhof hive to work frames that will go out on other hives. So I do not plan on extracting, just swapping out frames. I am not faint-hearted around bees so that is not a problem.

With several colonies working together, heat is maintained in supers and the cluster is less likely to withdraw to the brood area in cool spells.

I am hoping this will prompt them to be good wax builders. I plan to use queens for these boxes from a queen who's hive out did themselves last season drawing out anything I gave them. They averaged 10 6 5/8 frames a week for a while.

I had some two queen hives last summer and they were not bad to work. I used two queens to build up hives rapidly for pollination, not honey production. I found the bees went into overdrive working for both queens. I brought them down to 1 queen in September and shipped the extra queens south to my brother. Those are some of my strongest hives this spring, full boxes of bees and still heavy with honey. They spent the winter under a snow drift so that protected them. The farmer said the wind was so bad they lost shingles off their roof through the winter. We did have a few storms where the wind was 70 mph, I was glad for the 6 feet of snow we had.