New super?

[gar1990]

Hi all I am a second year beekeeper, but first year for honey harvesting, we are based in NI with single brood boxes of AMM bees. My bees have just filled a super that was undrawn with honey (second super) it is still uncapped and they still have some more work to do on the outer frames. Do you think it is possible to add another super at this stage(undrawn) or is it too late in the season? Is it better just to remove 4ish frames when capped and store these until we are extracting and replace these with new ones rather than a whole super?

Also when we do remove the supers and if there is any unripe honey what is the best way to deal with this, bearing in mind that we plan to treat for varroa as soon as the supers are removed? I have heard of putting them below the brood box, but would this not lead to contamination?

Many thanks

Gareth

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

so they've just filled four frames of this super? have they drawn out the whole thing?

 

[Swarm]

Hi Gareth, welcome to the forum. Only you know how the flow is going in your area but I would guess it will slow down quite soon, a super of drawn comb and you may get lucky but if foundation is all you have (we've all been there) it may be asking too much of them to draw and fill. Try moving the outer frames to the centre to get them fully drawn, move full frames to the outside. By all means remove capped frames if you wish but I would try to get the super filled.

 

[gar1990]

Thanks for the replies, I did that inspection on Saturday, bees are now bursting out of the super there isn't any room left (all frames are fully drawn and mostly filled. They are just starting capping. I added another super tonight, I know its a gamble but the forecast is amazing again for tomorrow and pretty good for the next 7 days and there are still a good few blackberry blossoms that haven't opened yet (maybe 1/5th). figured I might get some more drawn comb for next year and maybe even some more honey.