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The trouble with triples

If triple-deep Langstroth hives are so good, why are they not more popular?

This is a really good question with several possible answers. All of the answers I’ve listed below are valid, but each and every one has to do with the needs of the beekeeper, not the needs of the bees.

  • Most hives are singles or doubles simply because commercial beekeepers—both migratory beekeepers and those who move their bees from field to field locally—just don’t use them. It is difficult and probably not cost effective to move triples if you don’t have to. And if you lose a few more colonies than you would if you kept them in triples, the losses (I’m assuming) wouldn’t come close to justifying the extra time and expense.
  • As for hobbyists—especially beginners—hives are nearly always sold as singles or doubles when you order them from a catalog or buy them in a store. “Complete hive kits” are usually singles and sometimes doubles. Even hives sold between beekeepers are mostly singles or doubles. All of this makes us think of a hive as something with two brood boxes—but that is a human thought, not a bee thought.
  • Triples are harder to handle. Hive inspections in a triple are a lot more work than in a double, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself otherwise. And they are also taller, especially when topped with multiple honey supers. It’s hard to lift heavy weights over your head.
  • You end up leaving a lot more honey in a triple than a double. Many people find it difficult to sacrifice all that extra honey to the bees. Most people harvest the honey above the second deep. With triples, you harvest only the honey above the third deep. Of course, this is one of several reasons why bees overwinter so well in a triple—lots of food and lots of heat capacity.
  • It is more expensive. Not only do you need more equipment (more boxes with frames and maybe a stepladder) but you lose that extra honey and any income it may have produced.

As I’ve mentioned before, beekeepers frequently report better overwintering success, larger honey harvests, less need for sugar syrup, earlier spring build-up, easier mite management, and fewer swarms after they convert to triples. This has been my experience as well with the few triples I have overwintered so far.

But, as with most aspects of beekeeping, the decision to go with triple deeps should be based on your current success, personal objectives, climate, finances, and physical ability to deal with the hives. Whether the pros outweigh the cons is a decision only you can make.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Triple deep questions

I received this list of questions from a beekeeper in the UK. Since others might have similar questions, I’m posting the answers here.

1. Does pyramiding just help the queen put brood upstairs, or does it give an improvement in comb building in supers above the excluder?

Pyramiding encourages the queen to expand her nest into the upper box. By moving part of the brood into the upper box, you prevent the bees from building a honey barrier above the main nest. Because there is now brood in that upper box, the workers treat it like part of the nest and so does the queen. Once the bees are tending brood in that box, they will also build comb in it. Pyramiding will not necessarily encourage the bees to build comb in honey supers.

From my experience it appears that the winter cluster in a triple brood chamber is substantially larger than in a double. But I believe the main advantage comes from the orientation of the cluster within the boxes. Since the cluster has more room to expand in the vertical direction, it doesn’t have to expand sideways, which keeps the nest centered and surrounded by lots of honey. This provides plenty of food, yes, but the main advantage of all that honey is thermal mass. The heat-holding capacity of the honey prevents the hive temperature from fluctuating wildly up and down.

And by providing top ventilation, you can keep the moisture down even though you have lots of bees. A tall stack of boxes provides better draft than a short stack, but all the honey, brood, bees, and comb—together with your moisture quilt—prevent the air from moving too fast through the hive. A dirty chimney draws poorly because the rough interior surface impedes the air flow. That is bad. But a rough interior in your beehive is good because it prevents the air flow from being so great that it chills the bees. Airflow requires a delicate balance—you want as much as necessary but as little as possible.

I see no reason for using an excluder in a triple deep hive. It’s hard enough to get the queen to lay in the third deep—you don’t need to worry about her going above that.

2. What is so wrong with sugar? Expense? The “junk food” concern of feeding them “unnatural” products? You would just like them to be self-sustaining? Or something else?

I could write a book about what’s wrong with sugar, and my reasons are not nearly as idealistic as you might think. It begins in the store. Since it’s expensive, I buy large quantities to save money. A 50-pound bag is nearly 45 percent of my weight so I hate putting it in the cart, moving it from cart to truck, moving it from truck to shed, moving it from shed to house, etc. I don’t like making syrup, getting stickies all over the counter, the stove, the cabinets, and myself. I hate it when my socks adhere to the floor, or worse, my husband’s socks. I hate filling plastic bags, or feeders, or jars, or anything else. I hate spilling it in the hives or cleaning it up if the bees don’t finish it. In fact, I hate every single thing about sugar. Hands down, sugar is my most unfavorite part of beekeeping.

3. I live in the UK, I’m not sure I have the climate to support a full 3 brood chambers being filled. What size brood chambers are you using?

Basically, we have a nine-month rainy season (October through June) and the other three months are bone dry. Average temperatures in the winter range from the high 30s to mid 40s °F (about 3 to 7 °C). Some years we have snow, some not. A few days every year the temperatures drops into the 20s (about -7 to ­-1.7 °C).

Where I live, the average annual first freeze of the year is September 30 and the average annual last freeze is May 17, which means we have a fairly short growing season. When I install packages, I do it mid-April.

Here are some climate statistics for Olympia, Washington. I live about 15 miles (24 km) away, but this is the best data I could find:

Olympia Temperature

Average temperature: 49.7 F (9.8 C)

Average maximum temperature: 60.2 F (15.7 C)

Average minimum temperature 32.9 F (4 C)

Yearly days with maximum temperature of 90 F (32 C) or higher: 6

Yearly days with minimum temperatures below freezing: 84

Olympia Precipitation

Yearly precipitation in inches: 50.6 (129 cm)

Days with precipitation of 0.01 inch (0.25 mm) or more: 163

Average yearly snowfall in inches: 16.7 (42.4 cm)

Other Olympia Weather Conditions:

Average wind speed: 6.7 mph (10.8 km/h)

Clear days: 52

Partly cloudy days: 84

Cloudy days: 228

Average relative humidity: 88.5

My brood boxes are what we call standard deeps. They measure about 41 x 50 x 23 cm. But no matter what size box you have, a thin pine box does not provide insulation like a tree trunk. Beekeepers must assure that the bees have plenty of insulating material surrounding the cluster.

 4. With a stack that high I’m guessing you need to tie them down all the time or support them in the wind in some way?

The kind of wind we have here would not knock them down. Not only are they impossibly heavy but they are all stuck together. I tie down all my hives, one deep or three, to discourage animals that may want to eat brood: raccoons, possums, foxes, wolves, coyotes, cougars, and bears (small bears, anyway) and, as it turns out, bulls. I live adjacent to a large state forest (91,650 acres or 370.9 km2) so these critters are common and curious.

 5. Does the weight of that huge stack not cause any issues? This year I had a hive stand collapse on me, hence the question.

Nothing short of a sizeable earthquake or Mt. Rainier erupting will dislodge my hive stands. You could use them for a house foundation. They are two-by-six treated construction with cross-bracing and sunk in 18 inches of concrete at all four corners. They have roofs, too. Each one will hold three hives. Someday, far in the future, archeologists will discover them and puzzle over what the ancients used them for.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Even painted boxes warp

Warped boxes are irritating. The boxes in the photo are only about two years old. They were painted and assembled when I first got them, but they still managed to warp. As you can see, the middle portions shrunk away from each other until a space large enough for bee passage appeared between them.

Will the bees let this go? Of course not! It has turned into their entrance of choice.

There is nothing really wrong with this as long as a hive is strong. It gives them a second entrance and probably saves some bee energy because they don’t have to walk so far once inside the hive. It also prevents congestion at the main entrance.

The problem occurs if a colony becomes weak and prone to attacks by robber bees or yellow jackets. In that case, one of the entrances has to be sealed off so the bees can better defend the hive.

Rusty

Bees enjoying a pair of warped boxes.
Bees enjoying a pair of warped boxes.

Yet another take on follower boards

After making some Langstroth brood boxes with nine frames and two follower boards (in positions one and eleven) I began to think that it would be easier to make a ten-frame Langstroth into an eight-frame Langstroth by putting follower boards in positions one and ten. In this way you could use two standard Langstroth frames and fill them with Masonite to use as your followers. This method has several advantages:

  • The follower boards would be easier to make. Instead of having to divide a frame lengthwise, you could use the whole thing.
  • A full brood box would be lighter with just eight brood frames instead of ten. Using this system, the weight of a full ten-frame brood box with follower boards would be similar to that of a full eight-frame brood box without follower boards.
  • You gain some of the benefits of an eight-frame brood box (chiefly lighter weight) without sacrificing compatibility between eight-frame and ten-frame equipment.
  • You gain all the advantages of having follower boards (a place for bees to congregate, easy to remove frames, insulation in winter) while still having a conventional shape in your brood boxes. (In other words, your ten-frame slatted rack will work perfectly even though you have two follower boards.)
  • Because eight-frame equipment has become very common, we know that a hive can thrive in that configuration.

The downside is that a large hive, let’s say one with three deeps, will contain only 24 instead of 30 frames of bees. However, this would be the same if you had three eight-frame deeps with no follower boards, so I suspect it’s not much of an issue.

Rusty

How to make follower boards for a Langstroth hive

Here is one method of making follower boards for a Langstroth hive (also known as dummy boards). I made these for a deep brood box, but you can make them for any size box using the same method.

1. Start by measuring your frames from top to bottom and from side bar to side bar. Measure from the outside of each piece of wood to the outside of the opposite piece, but exclude the ears on the the top bar.

Measure the frames using the outside dimensions.
Measure the frames using the outside dimensions.

2. Select a regular top bar and cut it in half lengthwise.

Cut a top bar in half lengthwise.
Cut a top bar in half lengthwise.

3. Cut two pieces of masonite or other thin material according to the measurements of your frame. Also cut 4 small pieces of wood from scrap. (I show eight pieces in the photo but you only need four for a pair of follower boards.) The wood I used was the wedge from a wedged top bar. My pieces measure 3/16″ x 1/2″ x 4″ (0.5 cm x 1.25 cm x 4 cm). The length and width are not important but the thickness provides part of your bee space.

Cut two pieces of masonite and four spacers.
Cut two pieces of masonite and four spacers.

4. Center the masonite along the cut side of the top bars, lining up the top edges.

Make sure the masonite is centered along the top bar.
Make sure the masonite is centered along the top bar.

5. Fasten the masonite with a brad gun or stapler.

Fasten the masonite to the top bar.
Fasten the masonite to the top bar.

6. Fasten the spacers to the side of the masonite without the top bar.

Fastern the spacers to the masonite.
Fastern the spacers to the masonite.

7. The follower boards are now complete. Here is a view of the complete board on the top bar side.

Follower board showing top bar side.
Follower board showing top bar side.

8. Here is a view of the complete board on the spacer side.

Follower board showing the spacer side.
Follower board showing the spacer side.

9. Here is the completed deep brood box with nine frames and two follower boards. The spacing works best if the top bar side goes against the walls of the box. The spacer side lines up with the adjacent frame.

Follower boards in place.
Follower boards in place.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite