Drawing supers

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Sandwich it between your two broods until nearly drawn then put it back up top with excluder on. You may have some frames layed out but it's fast for getting it drawn. Much better done at start of the season though. Once it has honey in it the bees will get the idea. If you don't want to have the queen lay in it at all spray it with honey and water each day until the bees are drawing it out nicely

Good heavens what advices. Magic!

The colony draws the whole box foundations when you put it on in right time. Bees draw foundations only during flow.
 
Last edited:
Sandwich it between your two broods until nearly drawn then put it back up top with excluder on.

With that style you will kill the most of the brood.


If bees can occupy only one box and keep brood warm. You cannot force then expand the brood area.
 
Bees will draw out supers when they need the space, the same as they will go up through any excluder (unless it's one of the small batch of faulty plastic ones) when they need the space - no need to force them by buggering around with shallows in the brood space or any magic incantations
 
Original writer Rock has not informed, have she looked into the brood box, what is happening there. Is there any brood, how much bees and so on. Swarmed? Full of honey or pollen.

Why the colony does not grow.

It is common that a beginner cannot anticipate one box colony growth. **** nectar may fill the brood box in a week and the colony swarms two times. Then there will be quite few bees left.
 
Last edited:
With that style you will kill the most of the brood.
U

If bees can occupy only one box and keep brood warm. You cannot force then expand the brood area.
I've just got 22 frames drawn from one hive in 4 days 11 frames I gave to a split the other 11 is now half full of nectar on top along with another brood 80% full of honey. It now has 4 broods 2 filling with honey. One under the excluder one not. I checkerboarded the frames and forced them to draw them. They were backfilling my two broods so had to do something about it quick. Now they have 11 more frames to proses the honey and I've got 11 fresh frames for a few late splits. I don't think the brood will be affected in the slightest in these tempritures. I did the frames in two batches of 11 frames a time. If they start backfilling again I'll do it again. If I had put them over an excluder I'd be still waiting with a hive stuffing nectar in every cell that brood was emerging from
 
Last edited:
Good heavens what advices. Magic!

The colony draws the whole box foundations when you put it on in right time. Bees draw foundations only during flow.
Where does he live is the flow on? Where is his hive located? Bees can sometimes be backfilling broods and still be reluctant to draw a super for a verioty of reasons. Unless you've looked in his hive you don't know. I can have a hive that can't fill one super above the brood but if it's drawn they can certainly use it and more. He could have a hive that's badly choked up with nectar and rubbish excluder. The hive crammed full of bees at night time overflowing and in the daytime nearly empty because his queen has been badly restricted for laying space the past few months. In that case it's not going to get drawn. I know my bees have been bringing pollen in by the bucket load and nectar. I checked a split today for a queen. No queen but 11 frames of honey. 😂
 
Last edited:
I've just got 22 frames drawn from one hive in 4 days 11 frames I gave to a split the other 11 is now half full of nectar on top along with another brood 80% full of honey. It now has 4 broods 2 filling with honey.


It does not help Rock what you have somewhere there.
I have nursed bees 60 years and I know exactly how bees draw combs.
 
It does not help Rock what you have somewhere there.
I have nursed bees 60 years and I know exactly how bees draw combs.
Well that depends on the situation and what equipment he has spare. It could help him and others now and in the future. The principal is the same for frames or a super they don't like empty voids in the brood chamber so usually draw it. If they have 2 broods with enough bees to fill them they will draw it then it's either 2 broods and a half or a hive with a super to be extracted
 
Last edited:
Well that depends on the situation and what equipment he has spare. It could help him and others now and in the future. The principal is the same for frames or a super they don't like empty voids in the brood chamber so usually draw it. If they have 2 broods with enough bees to fill them they will draw it then it's either 2 broods and a half or a hive with a super to be extracted

First she shoud open the brood box and look every frame, how they look there.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top