Bees won’t vacate super - again....

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I was of the understanding that you should avoid smoking supers at harvest as you can taint the honey with smoke! Or is that just a myth?

back in 2014 I was visiting a convent in Maseru, Lesotho to see their bees - they used to clear their Langstroths down by using copious amounts of smoke. They offered me some of their honey to sample - I've tasted less smoky kippers

 

[mbc]

Is it possible that there might be some brood in the super?
If your queen has somehow laid eggs up there, it can be very difficult to get them to abandon it.

Can be a laying worker too with an odd drone cell making them reluctant to clear, it's not that uncommon to find the odd patch and sometimes a queen cell above the excluder and it makes bees stick.
I carry a cordless blower to get shot of these clumps I sometimes find before taking the supers back for extracting.

 

[drex]

Bear in mind that nectar takes up twice the space of honey, so an "excess "of supers is not such a bad idea. Also, when clearing ( using rhombus escapes cut in half) the bees from the supers need somewhere to go, and if clearing two or more supers, I put an empty one under the clearer board. Too much space ( within reason) is not that much of a problem at this time of year.
I never have a problem, unless half asleep and put the clearers on the wrong way up!

 

[polymath]

I am trying to clear a super, Hive has brood+1/2 Then 1 super below QE and 3 above QE.

I am trying to remove 1 super, I put a clearer board on yesterday, went to take it off today and its still stuffed with bees!

I had this problem last year and only solution was to put a new super below the one I wanted to clear. So I have done the same again. So hopefully tomorrow It will be clear this time.

I use clearer boards with the diamond shape bee escape, and have about a 3" rim below the clearer board to give the bees space.

I had this same issue last year, but only for the first harvest. In the autumn I was able to clearer 3 supers at once and the bees vacated obligingly.

Yet for the spring/early summer harvest by bees seem reluctant to vacate a super.

Does anyone know why they vacate supers so obligingly in the autumn, yet are so reluctant to vacate in the spring?

Thanks as always.

Remember supers give bees space as well as a place for nectar. Whenever I look to take a supers off I always put directly under it either an empty i.e. no frames/foundation brood box or super. Otherwise the bees can become too crowded below. As someone said with canadian systems and others if you leave them too long the bees go back up, i.e. 3 - 4 hours is enough. To be honest all else fails or sometimes if I have just a need to take a super off quickly i just use a leaf blower to blow the bees off, and brush off the last few. Been using a battery powered one but now have petrol for this season.

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

As someone said above: first reaction is it is Q- in some form. A clearer board is actually a great, non-invasive test for suspected Q-

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

A clearer board is actually a great, non-invasive test for suspected Q-

Is it?

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

Is it?

If we think of a world in which half of @Hivemaker. 's Qs are by his reckoning (there's a post somewhere) put into hives that are Q+ in some form, let's put it this way: before you ("you" not you, if you see what I mean) pick up the phone to him, stick a clearer board under a super and if it clears think twice. I have noticed a STRONG (not 100%: what is in beekeeping) correlation between clearing and being Q+

 

[masterBK]

I was asked to help a beginner a few years ago who was in a panic having found loads of bees in the supers two days after adding the clearer board. She had put it on upside down!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I have noticed a STRONG (not 100%: what is in beekeeping) correlation between clearing and being Q+

Rubbish - I have cleared supers on queenless hives with no issues in the past, so it proves nothing

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

Rubbish - I have cleared supers on queenless hives with no issues in the past, so it proves nothing

Throwdown! Who on here can design a test? I'm all Q+ at the moment, and no supers, is one problem...

 

[bingevader]

I was of the understanding that you should avoid smoking supers at harvest as you can taint the honey with smoke! Or is that just a myth?

No myth. Ask @masterBK who is a honey judge par excellence

You get a bad smoke aroma to you honey with that. Smoke is gasified tar and it condensates onto cappings..... don't do that.

back in 2014 I was visiting a convent in Maseru, Lesotho to see their bees - they used to clear their Langstroths down by using copious amounts of smoke. They offered me some of their honey to sample - I've tasted less smoky kippers

Maybe they are all too heavy handed?!
We've been doing it for years and not had any complaints.
Never noticed any tainting either.
But then I suppose it is a very light hand with the smoke combined with shaking as Finman has described.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Maybe they are all too heavy handed?!

In Africa, yes, you have to realise that most sustainable and 'conventional' beekeeping was originally taught by people coming from over here and telling them how it should be done, in fact, I received the same kind of 'advice' from the usual suspect before my first visit. Basically they all believed, without even testing the theory, that Adansoni/Scutellata are vicious aggressive bees that need great gouts of smoke pumped into the hive before opening (very much like watching some of the 'experts' at teaching apiaries over here). When in fact, a lot of the time, they need no smoke, in fact smoke upsets them (hence the aggression)

 

[bobba]

Well....

There were still bees in the box.

So I took the box off and shook/brushed the frames one at a time.

And much to my surprise I found 2 frames with brood on them. The rest is all capped.

The brood is all worker, and nearly all capped.

So that explains why they would not budge on this occasion.

I must now assume my Q has found her way into the supers, so I guess I should I remove the QE?

There always seems to be a new problem in bee keeping.....

 

[Erichalfbee]

Well....

There were still bees in the box.

So I took the box off and shook/brushed the frames one at a time.

And much to my surprise I found 2 frames with brood on them. The rest is all capped.

The brood is all worker, and nearly all capped.

So that explains why they would not budge on this occasion.

I must now assume my Q has found her way into the supers, so I guess I should I remove the QE?

There always seems to be a new problem in bee keeping.....

But at least you know that all the folk who warned you there might be brood there were right

 

[bobba]

But at least you know that all the folk who warned you there might be brood there were right

Yep, they certainly were.

I even said in one of my initial posts it could be a laying worker. But I was not expecting a frame and a bit of capped worker brood. They even had honey at the top and bottom of the frame to hide it from me.

 

[Finman]

What a problem again laying workers and what ever.

Shake the bees off and the super is clean in few minutes.

 

[linoleum bonypart]

Im a shaker too

 

[John Twidle]

Well....

There were still bees in the box.

So I took the box off and shook/brushed the frames one at a time.

And much to my surprise I found 2 frames with brood on them. The rest is all capped.

The brood is all worker, and nearly all capped.

So that explains why they would not budge on this occasion.

I must now assume my Q has found her way into the supers, so I guess I should I remove the QE?

There always seems to be a new problem in bee keeping.....

I had a similar experience. I had just completed a brood inspection, where I found a nice, fat marked queen, and, out of curiosity, I had a quick look in the supers only to find half a frame of sealed worker brood on the middle frame above the queen excluder. In conversation with a local ex bee inspector, he reckoned that when queens were short of laying space the workers would sometimes move eggs around.

 

[bobba]

I had a similar experience. I had just completed a brood inspection, where I found a nice, fat marked queen, and, out of curiosity, I had a quick look in the supers only to find half a frame of sealed worker brood on the middle frame above the queen excluder. In conversation with a local ex bee inspector, he reckoned that when queens were short of laying space the workers would sometimes move eggs around.

I have heard that before from the chap that chats about lay lines, sorry cannot remember his name right now.

I remember reading in the comments of the you tube video and weather it was possible seemed to split opinion. No one had gold standard evidence it can happen.

I cannot say I am convinced bees will carry eggs, but I would not write it off as impossible either.

I just got back from removing the QE, I had a peep in the top brood and sure enough there is larvae below the QE too! There was also some brood in at least one of the other supers too.

I have only seen this queen a few times, she is quite small compared to my other queens, she looks kind of long and thin. I wonder if she can squeezes through the QE.

This hive swarmed early last year, and was re-headed by the current queen. Last year I put one super on this hive and had exactly the same problem with brood in the super and removed the QE.

I only remembered this after looking at my records last night. If I had remembered this a few days back I would have been more open to the suggestion of there being brood in the super.

I will also check the QE for damage when I bring it in tmr.

I am leaning towards queen squeezing though the QE for me this time, as the same queen pulled of this trick last year. But yours may have been carrying eggs. And mine may have been carrying eggs two years in a row!

Recent events have taught me to stay open to all possibility until you know for sure.