Going away for 3 weeks, super up advice

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CliffDale

House Bee
Joined
Mar 13, 2010
Messages
210
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Location
Cornwall uk
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
8
I'm going to leave bees to their own mechanisms for 3 weeks.

I have three quarter full / capped supers on the national hives. Should I drop another super on them before I go away or is the honey flow now too late in the season?

I dont want to come back to empty hives!

Cliff
 
I'd put another super on just in case...

Story in point from a Beek whose been keeping bees for over 30 years. This happened about 20 years ago now, however.....

Come the end of July flow appears to have finished, he's taken off the supers extracted and put the wets back for the bee to clean. He's only got 10 hives at this point but he's been doing this a few years. He's got things scheduled, done and dusted as he's going to be away for the WHOLE of August.
He returns in the first week of September expecting a nice easy inspection to bed them all down for winter. Approaching the first hive he finds he can't get the roof off. Undetered he tries the second... same result; in fact same result for all 10.
So he sets to with some effort and eventually manages to pry the roof off. It's been wild combed to the crown board and there isn't an inch of free space uncombed.
When he eventually sorts everything out, having taken 1200lbs of honey off, he realises that the fields not 1/2 mile away are clover; which having been cut in July then get thier second flowering in mid-August.
 
I'd put another super on just in case...

Story in point from a Beek whose been keeping bees for over 30 years. This happened about 20 years ago now, however.....

Come the end of July flow appears to have finished, he's taken off the supers extracted and put the wets back for the bee to clean. He's only got 10 hives at this point but he's been doing this a few years. He's got things scheduled, done and dusted as he's going to be away for the WHOLE of August.
He returns in the first week of September expecting a nice easy inspection to bed them all down for winter. Approaching the first hive he finds he can't get the roof off. Undetered he tries the second... same result; in fact same result for all 10.
So he sets to with some effort and eventually manages to pry the roof off. It's been wild combed to the crown board and there isn't an inch of free space uncombed.
When he eventually sorts everything out, having taken 1200lbs of honey off, he realises that the fields not 1/2 mile away are clover; which having been cut in July then get thier second flowering in mid-August.

Result. That would be great to come back to from my perspective. :)
 
We went away 10 days ago and the flow was going strong. White clover will be coming back after the rain, and we may get a bit of the sainfoin flowering. We made sure every hive had 1 super that was empty when we left.

Back on Thursday, I wonder how they'll have got on.
 

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