Wasps + Honey - Apivar

[david230757]

There are hordes of wasps around the hives and we haven't dared open them recently to extract honey or put in the Apivar. The weakest hive has one emptyish super, the middling has two fullish supers and the strongest has a double brood & 3 fullish supers. When we checked a couple of weeks ago there was still a fair bit uncapped and the weather's not been great. We wanted to leave them some for winter.

Does this seem like a reasonable plan to get round the wasp problem?
- put in clearer boards one morning below the supers on all 3 hives without inspecting anything
- take off the supers that evening and stack them between some ply so wasps can't get in
- at the same time add the Apivar strips and start feeding.
- leave any extraction until the wasps die down
- when the Apivar's finished nadir a super below the brood on each hive (that should still give us a couple of supers of honey which is ample). The strong hive would be going into winter with a double brood on top of a super. Or is it better to extract everything and feed it back? I have a hydrometer.

 

[Erichalfbee]

There are hordes of wasps around the hives and we haven't dared open them recently to extract honey or put in the Apivar. The weakest hive has one emptyish super, the middling has two fullish supers and the strongest has a double brood & 3 fullish supers. When we checked a couple of weeks ago there was still a fair bit uncapped and the weather's not been great. We wanted to leave them some for winter.

Does this seem like a reasonable plan to get round the wasp problem?
- put in clearer boards one morning below the supers on all 3 hives without inspecting anything
- take off the supers that evening and stack them between some ply so wasps can't get in
- at the same time add the Apivar strips and start feeding.
- leave any extraction until the wasps die down
- when the Apivar's finished nadir a super below the brood on each hive (that should still give us a couple of supers of honey which is ample). The strong hive would be going into winter with a double brood on top of a super. Or is it better to extract everything and feed it back? I have a hydrometer.

Whatever else you’re doing if you leave a super of honey for the bees take out the QX and leave the super on top. Double brood doesn’t need a super.
Have a look At this thread. Light on stores advice please

 

[david230757]

How would we leave the double brood a super's worth of spare honey? If we need to remove the supers during the Apivar treatment is the only option to extract and feed back?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

How would we leave the double brood a super's worth of spare honey?

Why would you want to?

 

[david230757]

at the moment the beekeeping itself is reward enough and we just want the honey for our own use and gifts. So if there's a surplus we're happy to let the bees have it.

 

[Erichalfbee]

at the moment the beekeeping itself is reward enough and we just want the honey for our own use and gifts. So if there's a surplus we're happy to let the bees have it.

A colony on double brood doesn't need a super of stores. In a good year bees collect far more than they need. That's just the way they are and why humans capitalise on it
You're not doing them out of anything

 

[drdrday]

at the moment the beekeeping itself is reward enough and we just want the honey for our own use and gifts. So if there's a surplus we're happy to let the bees have it.

As the others have said, I wouldn't recommend leaving a super on top when they're already on double brood. They'll have more than enough stores in the brood boxes to get through winter. A super on top as well will just give them too much space to heat over winter and it will likely start to get mouldy. I'm speaking from experience as I did this myself last winter (my first), thinking I'd be extra cautious to give the bees plenty of stores but I won't be doing it again this year!

 

[david230757]

So on a double brood we can assume they'll already have enough stores down in the brood box for winter? This is all new to me but I thought they'd need to backfill with stores as the brood nest shrinks and we might not be leaving enough if we took all the supers. Or does that only apply to a single brood box? It would be good to look through the brood boxes but the wasps are still awful.

 

[drdrday]

So on a double brood we can assume they'll already have enough stores down in the brood box for winter? This is all new to me but I thought they'd need to backfill with stores as the brood nest shrinks and we might not be leaving enough if we took all the supers. Or does that only apply to a single brood box? It would be good to look through the brood boxes but the wasps are still awful.

You'll want to make sure the brood boxes are filled with stores going into winter. As the brood nest shrinks they'll have more space for stores. I'm extracting the last uncapped frames and feeding it back to the bees after the supers are all off so that they can stow it in the brood boxes until they're full. However, some prefer to nadir unfinished supers and get the bees to move it up into the brood box.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

A colony on double brood doesn't need a super of stores. In a good year bees collect far more than they need. That's just the way they are and why humans capitalise on it
You're not doing them out of anything

Or doing them any favours

 

[Erichalfbee]

So on a double brood we can assume they'll already have enough stores down in the brood box for winter? This is all new to me but I thought they'd need to backfill with stores as the brood nest shrinks and we might not be leaving enough if we took all the supers. Or does that only apply to a single brood box? It would be good to look through the brood boxes but the wasps are still awful.

Then you need to either feed syrup or feed the honey back to the bees.
Either extract and feed back
Nadir the super
Put the super over a crown board with a one beespace hole so that the bees rob the honey down
Three easy choices...maybe one more bother than the other two

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Bee sensible, extract the honey, feed the bees syrup.

 

[Swarm]

My strongest colony this Spring was a double brood, dummied to eighteen frames, that received no feeding at all. They had more than enough and even donated frames of unused stores to nucs.