Clearing Supers

[enrico]

I feel that I'm still not getting this Clearing process right.

On the last occasion I put in the clearer boards beneath the supers which I left on the hives. But 24 hours later they were still pretty full of bees.

I then took the supers off and stacked them on a clearer board off the hives. That got rid of most of the bees over a few hours. But I still had to contend with quite a few bees on the frames as I took each into the room I use for extraction.

I feel that I'm not doing this right.

And, in a follow-on question. If I end up stacking supers full of bees from different colonies in one pile in order to clear them, do the bees from colony A fight those from colony B? Or are they happier together in the absence of queens and brood?

I do one super at a time. It is so much easier, but then I have my own extractor so I dont have to extract in one go. It also depends if you are using rhombus clearers. They are so much quicker. I also put an eke between the clearer board and the super because the bees can find the holes so much easier. Can clear them in half a day sometimes but usually wait 24 hours

 

[North End Bees]

On the last occasion I put in the clearer boards beneath the supers which I left on the hives. But 24 hours later they were still pretty full of bees.


And, in a follow-on question. If I end up stacking supers full of bees from different colonies in one pile in order to clear them, do the bees from colony A fight those from colony B? Or are they happier together in the absence of queens and brood?

Were the supers fully capped? Young bees are reluctant to leave supers they're still working on.

If the supers are all stacked off the hives elsewhere the bees see it as a robbing situation.

 

[drex]

What sort of clearers? As above, I find rhombus the best, porters are useless. Give them space ( an eke or super with frames) under the clearer. Then they have somewhere to go. If there is any brood above the clearer they will not leave it.
Doing this I get virtual 100% clearance after about 6 hours

 

[Swarm]

I never got on with porter escapes and I've used various rhombus configurations with a decent eke below the board, to allow more space for the bees to clear but there are bees left in the supers. My landowner has consistently had better results with his two old Porter boards with no eke at all, it's quite comical.
Clearing the supers last year became a chore, one particular colony were so stubborn I double checked there was no brood in the supers.
I made some of these to try this year.

 

[Beedogg]

I cleared two sets of 2 supers, both on their hive and both using the same set-up of clearer-board. One (on a Nat hive) cleared more or less perfectly. The other (on a WBC hive - but I can't think that that's important) cleared to about 75% leaving quite a few bees still within it which needed brushing off.