Laurence Edwards installs a Ross Round section rack on a double-brood hive in early spring. He scrapes burr comb, adds a queen excluder, and positions the rack to give the colony more space before they run out of room. Cold but clear weather with good conditions ahead makes this the ideal moment to encourage the bees upward and into the new sections.
The time is finally here to add some Ross Round sections onto my beehives. The weather is set perfectly, even though it's a little bit cold today. The bees are primed, they're in the perfect position to accept these sections of Ross Rounds. I think within 2 or 3 weeks we're going to start to see the bees going up, drawing them out, filling them with honey. I'm hoping for a real bumper spring crop from my Ross Round sections. I'll get my bee suit on, I'll go and open up the bees, And I'll show you exactly how to put on your Ross Round sections onto your beehives. So this is the colony here that I'm gonna use for my Ross Round sections. It's a very funny time of year here at the moment. These are on double brood. The majority of that top box there is actually stores. They've been out on a good flow for the last couple of weeks. They've drawn out the foundation and they've put a decent amount of honey in there. I'm in two minds how to approach this. I'm gonna keep it as simple as I possibly can though. I'm going to run it as a double brood configuration. I'm going to add a queen excluder on top, and I'm going to add one single rack of Ross rounds because I know in the next 2 weeks they are going to be really short of space when it comes to storing honey. So this is the colony we've got. That's the top brood box. Got some brood in there, got some stores in there, mostly drawn out. It's a new one for 2022. And then we've got a 14 by 12 box underneath it. And then we've got 2 really good weeks of weather forecast as well. So my plan is that they're going to be short on space. Place for both brood and for honey. By putting that queen excluder on top and then the section rack, it means it's going to force them to work that section rack even if they don't want to work it. So there's the queen excluder directly on. Just going to give that a little scrape down now just to get rid of any of that burr comb, and then I'll get that section rack directly on top of it. So there we go, we're all set up. We've got the Ross round section rack on there, that's on the top, queen excluder underneath it, Directly on top of my double brood configuration. I'm hoping that I'm going to have a real good emergence of brood over the next 2 weeks coincide with the good early spring weather, and that means it's going to force the bees up into that box upstairs. They're already up there checking it out, and then we'll see what happens over the next few weeks. So I'm really excited by this. This apiary is so good when it comes to producing honey all the way throughout the year. Big strong colony, double brood, The weather looks really good over the next couple of weeks as well. I reckon we're gonna come back and we're gonna see lots of action up here in the Ross Round section rack. Just finishing it off there with the roof, with the feeder that I use as a crown board. Obviously I'm not feeding down into that. I keep my feeders on all the way throughout the year. Means that it's nice and warm at the top as well. Gives the bees even more encouragement to move up and to draw out that wax. I'll see you on the next episode where hopefully we're gonna give you a bit of an update and show you just how much wax they've drawn out in that section rack.
