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Can you put a honey super on too early?
YES! If you put them no too early the bees lose the heat up to the empty super. That will slow down brood rearing and reduce the number of bees they can keep warm. You are still full with honey so they have food they will clear as they raise new bees.
When should I put my honey supers on?
The ideal time to add a super is during periods of natural population growth (typically, the spring), before or during a honey flow (spring or summer), or during periods of swarming (again, typically the spring). Before adding a super, beekeepers often use a standard rule of thumb, which is known as the 7/10 rule.
Should I add another brood box or super?
My recommendation is to always add a second brood box before adding any honey supers, as this will result in a much stronger beehive and will give the queen more room to lay her eggs. When you have between six and eight of them drawn out, place your honey super on top, so that the bees have more space.
Can you add a super too soon?
While some beekeepers may get away with adding a super too early, many will not, and you can actually severely affect the wellbeing of your hive if you add a honey super too early. If you give a beehive too much space, they can struggle to keep their hive warm, and will expend lots of energy (honey) trying to.
Can you feed bees with supers on?
To clarify, a beekeeper should never feed sugar syrup to bees when they have a honey super in place. Never. If a honey super is in place when the bees have sugar syrup, they will store it in the comb just like honey.
How many honey supers do I need per hive?
A single hive can have at least 2-3 supers. When your first honey super is about ⅔ full of honey, add another super on top of it. Repeat this process until you’re ready to remove a super.
How many brood boxes Should a hive have?
How many brood boxes should you have? The general consensus in most regions of the world is to use either one or two brood boxes. Using three or more means that you are probably doing your bees a disservice. In this case you would be better off splitting the large hive so you can get back to one or two brood boxes.
What can I do with half filled honey supers?
You can put all the partially capped frames in a super above an inner cover. As long as the days remain warm enough for the bees to move around, they will move the honey from the super down close to the brood nest. If you want them to remove all of it, scratch open the capped cells.
Can I use honey supers as brood boxes?
A honey super is usually of a shallower depth than the brood box because when a honey super is full of capped honey it’s extremely heavy to lift. Therefore many beekeepers prefer to use two shallower supers rather than a single deep one. The colony cannot keep the brood box and supers warm during the cold weather.
When should I add a second brood box?
However, you should not wait until every frame has drawn comb. Instead, when 6-7 frames have drawn comb (in a 10 frame box), you should consider adding another box. The bees will continue to build out the comb in the lower box but will now have space to work upwards into the new box.
Will adding a super prevent swarming?
We might also super as a means of relieving congestion in the brood area of a hive, thus reducing the tendency of the bees to swarm. If bees are backfilling nectar in cells that the queen needs to use in spring expansion, the brood area may become congested.
Why are my bees not going into the Super?
If the whole summer goes by and they never put anything in the supers, it’s because there wasn’t enough surplus nectar. The amount of honey they store has everything to do with how much nectar is available, and very little to do with how you arrange the honey supers.
How do you get bees to move into honey super?
If you want to encourage them to pull wax, feed them 2 parts sugar to one part water in jars/feeders inside the hive to reduce robbing. You can also check the bottom box and move the outside frames, which should have drawn wax comb, bee bread and honey, and move those to the top box to encourage bees to move up.
What happens if you put second brood box on too early?
If its too soon for the second brood box, they may tear at the wax or fill it with nectar and turn it into honey. If the queen needs more room , the bees give you a clue. Look to your bees and the way the queen is running about the hive from comb to comb, looking to lay her eggs.
