Freezing uncapped frames

[patrickr]

Hi all

I'm finishing off the last of my harvest. I want to leave the bees with a super of their own honey so I'm (painstakingly) shuffling and removing the odd super of capped frames to extract and whittling down to one full super for the bees, then getting the apiguard on (taking into account ivy coming on). I'm anticipating being left with a few extra frames of partially capped stores which won't fit and that I don't want contaminated with thymol or occupying another super (too cold). I know I can freeze fully capped frames but can I freeze unripe honey and feed it back to the bees in the spring? Or am I just overcomplicating it all? Any other ideas appreciated.

Thanks

 

[drdrday]

Personally, I wouldn't leave them a super of honey. And I'm not saying that from the point of view of harvesting every scrap of honey you can get, but because your bees should be able to fit enough stores to get them through winter in their brood box, and a super above them just gives them a big 'attic' space to have to heat.

I'd just extract all the capped frames for yourself and give them back the uncapped. You can either put the uncapped frames above a crown board with a hole so they can 'rob it' down and add to their stores, or nadir an uncapped super for them to move it up into the brood box. Alternatively (but with more work), you could also extract the uncapped frames and use it in a feeder to feed the bees.

 

[patrickr]

Personally, I wouldn't leave them a super of honey. And I'm not saying that from the point of view of harvesting every scrap of honey you can get, but because your bees should be able to fit enough stores to get them through winter in their brood box, and a super above them just gives them a big 'attic' space to have to heat.

I'd just extract all the capped frames for yourself and give them back the uncapped. You can either put the uncapped frames above a crown board with a hole so they can 'rob it' down and add to their stores, or nadir an uncapped super for them to move it up into the brood box. Alternatively (but with more work), you could also extract the uncapped frames and use it in a feeder to feed the bees.

Hi
Thanks for the reply and advice. I'll go for this approach and will probably nadir.

 

[drdrday]

Hi
Thanks for the reply and advice. I'll go for this approach and will probably nadir.

Just be careful if you have a lot of wasps about. Stores below the brood box are hard for the bees to defend and you can get robbing. If you do have a weaker colony or a lot of wasps around then you might want to hold off a couple more weeks (when the wasp numbers are lower) before putting the super underneath.