Art When You Take Away Rather Than Add to

In that location is a very short answer to the question of when you should add honey supers to your hive, and it is when the bees need more space.

The best fourth dimension to add a super to your hive is when seven of the ten frames in the meridian brood box are existence used for breed and for honey storage (otherwise known every bit the 7/x rule).

However, it is useful to consider how the hive functions so you can be clear about when the time is correct. Equally you may know, there are several types of beehives bachelor, and the choice of which to use depends on what type of hive you lot are comfy using.

Hives grow and shrink during the yr as the needs of the colony of bees change. Love supers play a key part as they provide room for the colony as information technology grows in size and collects stores. They are also important for the apiculturist who wants to efficiently harvest honey from their hives.

Bees are happy to build a hive in any space that is protected from the weather. The purpose of a hive is to make the work of a beekeeper easier. The common components of a hive are:

• a stand with legs
• a floor with entrance block
• a breed bedchamber consummate with frames
• a queen excluder
• a super complete with frames
• a crown lath
• a roof.

Hives can be made of forest or polystyrene. The two chief types of boxes used to provide sheltered infinite are brood chambers and supers.

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What Happens in a Super?

The beekeeper fills the brood chamber and the super with frames that help organize the colony in a fashion that is easy to manage. The bees build their comb on the sides of the wax foundation in the frame; this allows the apiculturist to easily audit what is happening in the hive.

The queen lives in the brood sleeping accommodation and lays her eggs here. The brood chamber volition have some stores of honey, mainly on the outer frames. This function of the hive is separated from the honey supers by a queen excluder, which is a mesh designed to permit worker bees up to the supers but not the queen. This ways that no eggs will exist laid on frames in the dearest supers.

The purpose of a super is to store dearest in a fashion that will make extraction easy. When choosing what type of frame to put in the super, the beekeeper should ensure that it will fit in the equipment that they will use for extracting the honey after harvesting.

Foraging worker bees collect four things necessary for the survival of the colony: water, pollen, propolis, and nectar. The first 3 are nerveless as needed. However, bees will behave on collecting nectar until no more is available. As a outcome, the colony needs infinite to store honey. This means that the beekeeper has to keep watch to add new supers when the bees are fix for them.

The process of storing dearest is simple. The bees build a honeycomb on the wax foundation in each frame. Each cell is then filled with love and capped with wax when it is total. Usually, the bees fill the super from the center, working outwards. If in that location is non enough dear to fill a prison cell it is left open up (described as uncapped).

Inspecting Your Hive

When a beekeeper inspects their colony, there are five questions that ever demand to exist asked:

1. Exercise the bees accept enough room?
2. Is the queen present and laying eggs?
3. How is the colony progressing (edifice up in size, queen cells present)?
4. Are at that place signs of disease?
5. Practice the bees take enough stores?

It is an iterative process. Your answers tell you what action needs to exist taken. For the purpose of adding supers, only the offset question needs to be answered. If they practise not accept enough room, another super is required.

Be Prepared

Space is added to a hive by putting one box on top of the others, edifice upwards. From bound into early summer the numbers of bees in a hive increases dramatically and the availability of nectar is at its greatest. This is the time when a beekeeper is expecting to be calculation supers to their hives.

It is wise to plan ahead and put new supers on meridian of your hive before the bees have filled out all the frames in the existing supers with dearest. As a rule of thumb, you lot should expect to demand three supers for each hive.

When inspecting the hive, think that nectar takes up three times the space of processed honey. Beekeepers should allow actress space for this early in the flavour.

The supers are usually left on the hive until the end of the flavor. Withal, beekeepers should be aware of what types of crops are growing nearby. For case, If there is a lot of oilseed rape which produces honey that granulates, then the beekeeper should accept out full supers and replace them with empty ones as soon as possible. These supers should be extracted before the honey hardens on the comb and becomes very difficult to process.

Local Understanding

As with and then many aspects of apiculture, it is appropriate to go along in bear upon with your local beekeeping gild and to compare notes on when nectar is widely available in your surface area. This fourth dimension of year is known as the honey flow and tin can vary a lot depending on local weather condition.

1 reason for this is because when local wisdom tells you that menstruation is coming to an end then you lot should not add extra supers even if the hive looks as if it will soon be full. It is better to accept supers containing fully filled frames than supers containing partially filled frames. The latter will take more than time to handle.

Before removing dear from the super you need to bank check that the cells accept been capped. At the terminate of the menstruum, many cells may only exist partially filled as the bees volition exist waiting to gather more nectar. When inspecting the super, shake any frames with a lot of unfilled cells over the top of the super and leave it for a few days and then the bees can collect the honey and cap the cells.

When taking the supers out, the supers will demand to be cleared of bees. This is washed by a combination of shaking the frames and brushing them. Identify an empty super about to the hive and accept the frames out of the super ane by i, clearing them of bees. Once the new super is full, take it abroad from the hive and cover information technology to prevent them from returning.

Prior to this, the apiculturist tin can also employ a clearer board to empty the super of bees. This is placed underneath the super and works by allowing bees to go down but will not let them back up. Bees are also more than easily cleared when the conditions is good for flying.

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Source: https://www.beekeeping-101.com/when-to-add-honey-supers/

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