Get your super back now

[enrico]

Just a heads up to those of you who have ended up on a brood and a half and want to reduce to a single brood box. At the moment, or very soon, there will be no drone brood and the drones will be evicted. At this point you can put the half brood above a queen excluder. You MUST make sure that the queen is in the main brood box but if you can't find her then go back in five days and where the eggs are the queen will be. Once again makes sure she is in the main brood box. The brood that is in the half brood will emerge and the box is then easily recoverable.
Hope this helps....my other tip is that double brood is always easier to manipulate than brood and a half!!!
E

 

[LeaBees]

Just a heads up to those of you who have ended up on a brood and a half and want to reduce to a single brood box. At the moment, or very soon, there will be no drone brood and the drones will be evicted. At this point you can put the half brood above a queen excluder. You MUST make sure that the queen is in the main brood box but if you can't find her then go back in five days and where the eggs are the queen will be. Once again makes sure she is in the main brood box. The brood that is in the half brood will emerge and the box is then easily recoverable.
Hope this helps....my other tip is that double brood is always easier to manipulate than brood and a half!!!
E

Hi
Can you nadir the super if it has capped stores?

 

[enrico]

You can but bruise the cappings with the back of your hive tool or score across the top of them . It would be far better, if you have a whole box of stores to put the super on top and leave it for the winter without a qe. Or..... Remove the honey for yourself at £6 a pound and feed with sugar at 65p!
Or..... Spin the lot out, capped and uncapped and feed it back to them in a rapid feeder. Or ......put a crown board and an eke on with a small hole Inthe crown board and put the box on the top of that and let them Rob out any stores and honey after bruising the cappings. It all depends which you prefer!

 

[Erichalfbee]

But why? Much more difficult to defend and the bees just have to move it up

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

But why? Much more difficult to defend and the bees just have to move it up

all we see at this time of year is everybody twitching and wringing their hands about wasps and robbing - so why go and put all the precious stores right next to the entrance which means taking the workforce away from the brood area to defend.
It's like doing your weekly shop, bringing it home and just leaving it all by the front gate

 

[victor meldrew]

all we see at this time of year is everybody twitching and wringing their hands about wasps and robbing - so why go and put all the precious stores right next to the entrance which means taking the workforce away from the brood area to defend.
It's like doing your weekly shop, bringing it home and just leaving it all by the front gate

Nadering is done essentially to take advantage of the bees propensity to work upwards . They start at the bottom and consume their stores from there first . putting a super of store ontop means putting a Queen excluder on , other wise said super could be full of brood following spring . This has the disadvantage of the colony refusing to leave the Queen below the excluder and suffering from isolation starvation!

 

[Erichalfbee]

Nadering is done essentially to take advantage of the bees propensity to work upwards . They start at the bottom and consume their stores from there first . putting a super of store ontop means putting a Queen excluder on , other wise said super could be full of brood following spring . This has the disadvantage of the colony refusing to leave the Queen below the excluder and suffering from isolation starvation!

How do you work out they are at the bottom? The brood box is full of brood and stores when you nadir the shallow.
If you’re leaving a super on top fir winter you don’t leave your excluder on

 

[victor meldrew]

How do you work out they are at the bottom? The brood box is full of brood and stores when you nadir the shallow.
If you’re leaving a super on top fir winter you don’t leave your excluder on

Leave the excluder off , and as stated, you are likely to find brood in the super .
ok! If you have enough supers to reserve your over winter supers for that purpose otherwise you will be using supers with frames that have held brood . A practice I avoid at all times .
both ways will work, the bees are fantastic at adapting to the interference of mankind .

 

[Erichalfbee]

Brooded supers don’t bother me. I wonder how many folk do avoid using them for honey?

 

[victor meldrew]

Brooded supers don’t bother me. I wonder how many folk do avoid using them for honey?

They contain brood cocoons. The bees clean out what they can but always leave the cocoons .
I once harvested and outside brood comb that was wall to wall honey capped with beautiful white cappings .
quite honestly it was manky . I wouldn’t have used it as cooking honey .

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Brooded supers don’t bother me. I wonder how many folk do avoid using them for honey?

The ones who don't think about their beekeeping

 

[bingevader]

Brooded supers don’t bother me. I wonder how many folk do avoid using them for honey?

It's all you get in a Warré!
Although, technically they're not supers as you nadir an empty box.
Maybe my bees don't know better, but they move up into their stores in the winter and then work back down again in the spring/summer.

 

[victor meldrew]

The ones who don't think about their beekeeping

Here we go again .
Edited.
Ball not player please

 

[enrico]

They contain brood cocoons. The bees clean out what they can but always leave the cocoons .
I once harvested and outside brood comb that was wall to wall honey capped with beautiful white cappings .
quite honestly it was manky . I wouldn’t have used it as cooking honey .

A bit confused here. Are you suggesting the cocoons were mixed with the honey, or that the honey was tainted in some way? I have never found this. My honey is clean wether from comb used for brood or not! I can't see why it would affect the honey! Provided you haven't got brood in the comb at the time of course!

 

[enrico]

I frequently have a situation where I have a brood box with a super above. Both may have brood in. Eventually as the season progresses they will fill the super with honey and the brood will move down. At that point you can slip a qe between or just spin it out.

 

[user 819]

No issue here with extracting honey from brood comb deep or shallow, I don't extract from comb with brood present. The bees are clean buggers brood cells will be pristine clean before they put honey in it for saving.

 

[pargyle]

I never use queen ex;luders and in the early part of the season (even running 14 x 12 brood boxes) there wlll be brood in the supers. By the time I extract (this coming weekend I hope) the brood will be long gone and I've never experienced a problem with honey being tainted by anything ...

 

[Anduril]

Using double brood, I have found brood in the chamber above and stores below, there is no need to bruise the stores. They also defend the hive extremely well. When spring arrives the bottom chamber is empty and I have brood above. These are my observations over a number of years.

 

[victor meldrew]

I never use queen ex;luders and in the early part of the season (even running 14 x 12 brood boxes) there wlll be brood in the supers. By the time I extract (this coming weekend I hope) the brood will be long gone and I've never experienced a problem with honey being tainted by anything ...

Maybe my incident with the well used brood frame coloured my judgement but another thought has entered my mind . Supers tend not to attract wax moth whereas stored brood boxes most certainly do ?

 

[Murox]

Maybe my incident with the well used brood frame coloured my judgement but another thought has entered my mind . Supers tend not to attract wax moth whereas stored brood boxes most certainly do ?

I really do hope you are correct - but I doubt it - I'm all ears