How do you store your supers

[VEG]

As in the title

How do you store your supers?
Do you store them wet or dry?
Do you treat them with anything?
Do you keep them in bags or stack them up with lids?

 

[GingerNut]

What do you mean?

What is wet or dry?

I store mine on top of the brood box with a crown board in between.

Yours Roy

 

[MJBee]

In stacks of 6 , joints sealed with masking tape, empty brood with solid close fitting board and lid on top. 2 sulphur strips in a burner in the brood box every 6 weeks.
No residue, no mould and most of all no wax moth.
Gingernut,
I am reluctant to store them over the colony as I have had a Greater
Wax Moth attack in the brood box of an active colony 1 frame wrecked and 3 damaged but not too badly
Mike

 

[Heather]

I spin them dry - then put in chest freezer for a week then leave out to defrost-just - then bag each super individually in thick bin liners then stack in shed. So hopefully any wax moth is deterred.

 

[Haughton Honey]

Stacked up in an outbuilding - crownboard at the bottom and top of each stack - with Manley frames installed......but no comb fitted.

 

[VEG]

Wet means put away after extracting and not giving them back to the bees co clean out (dry)

Does anyone use certan?

 

[Hivemaker.]

Wet.after treating.

 

[GingerNut]

Wet means put away after extracting and not giving them back to the bees co clean out (dry)

Does anyone use certan?

Ah

Bees have had mine to clear since I removed the honey about a month ago

Took them away from them yesterday, and stacked above

Yours Roy

 

[cstroud]

Store mine dry, after the bees have cleared them. I wrap each one with brown paper (I have a big roll- don't know where it came from). I put a handful of lavender in each to keep the wax moths away.

As I have increased my number of hives, nexy year I will probably not bother wrapping them, and just stack them and seal the edges of each with masking (as described above). Wax moths (in case you did'nt know) prefer the dark and will enter in through a tiny hole easily.

they can destroy a super and turn the wax combs into dust in days!!
Chris

 

[jezd]

Store mine dry, after the bees have cleared them. I wrap each one with brown paper (I have a big roll- don't know where it came from). I put a handful of lavender in each to keep the wax moths away.

As I have increased my number of hives, nexy year I will probably not bother wrapping them, and just stack them and seal the edges of each with masking (as described above). Wax moths (in case you did'nt know) prefer the dark and will enter in through a tiny hole easily.

they can destroy a super and turn the wax combs into dust in days!!
Chris

confused, wax month does not feed on wax itself but on the pollen/stores so surely dry and clean supers are relatively safe?

 

[cstroud]

I'm sure you are correct about the moths feeding on pollen/ stores- I seem to end up with bits of set honey etc still in some supers even after the bees have cleared them, so I'd rather be safe than sorry. But yes they probably would be fairly safe.

Chris

 

[roche]

Quote from Celia Davis - Wax moth can digest wax but preferred food is old laval and pupal skins of bees, and pollen. The laval stage is most problematic for the beekeeper, as the larvae tunnel through comb...They can also damage woodwork making their cocoons.

 

[jezd]

Cheers, those experienced in such matters, how often do supers get damaged that over Winter as dry frames and then simply stacked up?

My worry is that so much effort seems to be put into keeping them safe when the risks are very low.

 

[MJBee]

My experience is that unless the supers, or brood frames are protected the wax moth will find them and ruin them very quickly.
20 years ago PCB (moth balls) and a sealed bin liner was the norm. Then PCB was banned and I just bagged them, one year a mouse chewed a hole in the bin bag and the whole super was ruined by wax moth - the mouse couldn't find a way in but the wax moths did.
Look after your drawn supers it took a lot of honey to get them drawn.
Mike

 

[jezd]

cheers

 

[Hebeegeebee]

If you leave them wet and leave a gap, you allow wasps to get in and they become dry pretty quickly! :!

 

[Finman]

.
POLL:

I store boath wet and dry.

In dry = bees licked is an advantage: in heavy rape frlow bees do not clean combs. If they store nectar over honey crystals, honey will cruystallize sooner and makes sieving difficult.

In late autum I have no time to put combs to be licked and it makes a awfull riot and robbing.

We have no harm about moths because we have so cold winter.

 

[DrNick]

I thought wax moth weren't active below 15˚C!

 

[roche]

The moth tends not to be active at lower temperatures, but the larva merely slows its development, sometimes for several months. -15 degrees C for several hours will kill it though. I freeze supers for a couple of days before storage.