Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => General Beekeeping => Topic started by: tbonekel on May 10, 2015, 07:44:50 pm
-
The last bee meeting I went to, there was a guy that said when adding supers, place them below full supers. Make sense or not? I can reason both ways.
-
I do. I under super.
-
I have done both, and notice very little difference in the speed of build up. Pros of top supering: less work for you and super is in the hottest part of the hive, which the wax builders like. Cons: the nectar has further to travel to get there. The cons are largely eliminated if your bees like using a top entrance.
-
Pistol- do you think it matters if its foundation vs. pulled comb.
Seems to me it makes them wanna pull those frames quicker if its in the middle. Like sticking a frame of foundation between to pulled frames. Just me thinking.
-
Bee's have a natural inclination to work top to bottom, I encourage this by bringing a full frame into the new super.
-
A strong hive in a strong flow will draw a piece of cardboard in outer space. It's when conditions are less than prime that you have to tinker. Sometimes when you bottom super in a dearth, they just climb up the foundation and continue to work the top super. The bottom super gets all travel stained and then they don't want to draw it out ever. If you're you really want nice frames, take your first drawn super and use it to make two checker boarded supers (alternating drawn and foundation). Another technique is to take the drawn frames from the middle of the super and rotate them to the outside positions where bees don't like to draw comb.
One of the big differences in top supering is that you get way less pollen further from the brood. Also once you have a full super it's fairly safe to pull the queen excluder and keep building up.
-
I am with Pistol on this one.
-
I run a top entrance (actually top and bottom) during a heavy nectar flow and top super.
-
I give six votes for one method, half a dozen for the other. ;D
-
LOL Ef....
I like to OVER super, because the honey cap usually keeps the queen where she belongs. as someone else mentioned, under supering can get pollen and even brood in the UNDER supered comb...
I also use a top entrance, so they have free access to the top super
-
I'm leaning towards top supering simply because I did put a super on under the first super... and found that the queen did sneak up there and layed eggs all along first bottom row of cells. It did tell me tho that I needed to get some frames in the top hive box so she would have more room to lay.
-
to ef's comment I say...
why not both? sometimes I do one and sometimes the other depending on the individual hive.
-
Say! I'm am curious as to why all the stacking of supers? What is the purpose of?
Does the honey season more when left on the hive? I've seen pics of hives that are 10 deeps high. Why not just take the supers off when they are solidly full, put another empty on?
-
Many people only extract once a year. The only way to store full supers off the hive is in a freezer, otherwise wax moths ruin them. So the easiest storage is on a strong hive. I think that very few commercial bee keepers stack very high. They just extract every time they have a couple of hundred supers capped.
-
I can see one advantage of top supering. It's easier to tell when you need to add another super. If bottom supering, you have to take the top, full ones off just to check if you need to add another.
-
I have thought about that as well tbone, and that's one reason why I go all mediums as well. I think I still prefer top supering.
-
Aye, what PistolPete said.. in southern areas there is also more worry of SHB too..
If you pull a super every time it is full, it would have to be extracted within a couple days, which would also mean cleaning the extracting equipment every time..
The best place to store a capped super is on the hive that capped it.. extract one time and have one big mess to clean instead of a bunch of little messes.
-
I harvest when I find a capped super. I place it in a large plastic trash bag and seal it with tape. Then I freeze it for a few days to a week. Once taken out, it can be stored anywhere in the house or garage until ready to extract. Just keep it where mice or others that can tear the plastic can't get to it. You can store as many as you want, for as long as you want.
-
Iddee, I have read in another post this method you use. I have two med supers sitting on a table in my garage that are half full of capped honey. They are covered so insects can't get to them.
I lost hot hive so there is one med super that has no home at the moment. And mother hive and #2 hive went queenless, so I took off those supers during the time that I was watching and inspecting the hives. As soon as I know that both of these hives are queen right I will put the supers back on. Otherwise, I have to keep lifting them on and off. No flow going on right now anyway.
Is this a good idea?
-
Did you seal them and freeze them? The insect eggs were already in them. If you didn't freeze them, they will be destroyed.
-
Nooope, I sure didn't. Does that mean all those half filled frames are useless now?
-
Check them. If they look good, they are good. If they are nothing but cobwebs and manure, they aren't any good.
-
Cool! They're all still good, I check them yesterday.
Another thing I've been doing is when the supers are on, I only keep one on at a time, I give a quick looksee once a week, when another frame is completely capped, I put it in the freezer for now, then replace with one of the half filled frames. A constant rotation of sorts
-
We have had a great start this spring in north central texas. Been too rainy lately though. I under supered a couple strong hives two weeks ago and both had drawn all deep frames equally and filled a couple frames since. Don't know if it's the year or undersupering, I suspect its the year.
Tec, I missed you at the TAMU queen rearing event May, 2. Was able to have an extended chat with Sue Cobey though. Was a good day. :-)
-
Another consideration in favor of undersupering comes into play when you are putting on frames for building. The further the bees are away from the queen when they build cells, the more likely they are to build worker cells. With worker cell sized foundation you are more or less protected, but if given a chance, bees building cells for honey storage will almost always prefer to make the larger cells, this uses less wax per unit area. Of course, there's nothing wrong with larger cells except that you won't be able to put them in the brood nest to have the queen lay worker brood.
This comment is irrelevent if you're supering with built frames in the supers.
-
Are forager bees, worker bees, nurse bees, guard bees, all in the same catagory as 'worker bees'?
-
Absolutely! :yes:
They change their jobs as they age and as the needs of the hive change. But they are all "undeveloped" females.
-
Would you be so kind as to explain 'undeveloped'? :)
-
Queens and workers are both genetically females. Those female larvae that are fed an extended rich diet of royal jelly develop fully into females with developed ovaries and organs and glands that give them the ability to mate and lay eggs etc. The workers are fed royal jelly for a shorter period and not in the same profusion. As a result, their physical development is "stunted" or "incomplete".
This explains why queens can be raised from selected female eggs that are fed fully and then develop into queens. It also explains why workers, under certain conditions (most notably, the lack of queen pheromones in the hive which serve to suppress the dveelopment of the workers' ovaries) can become egg layers. However, not having properly developed female secondary sex organs, they are incapable of mating and therefore only lay drone (unfertilized) eggs.
-
:goodjob: Perfect! Thank You Ef ;) I wish I would have had teachers like you when I was a youngster in school ;)
-
so jen back to tbone's question?............... :D
"The last bee meeting I went to, there was a guy that said when adding supers, place them below full supers. Make sense or not? I can reason both ways."
i don't tbone, sometimes i have switched around, but typically i leave them as they are and have had them stacked as high as 7 or 8 on strong hives. i don't have problems with wax moth or shb. i harvest once a year.
i use queen excluders with drawn foundation, i don't like queens in the supers, and in a dearth they will utilize honey and before you know it, the dearth ends and your queen is laying in a honey super (without the excluder). i am picky this way. if i think i can keep an eye on this and a good nectar year, i will remove the excluder and monitor closely.
i use top entrances, and if mulitple supers are on, imrie shims go on as well, to give the forager bees access to the top.
in my HO, a good queen WILL lay in an empty super unrestricted by an excluder, there is nothing to stop her.
i have found no difference of honey collection, with or without an excluder on, of placing drawn foundation underneath a full super of honey.......in a good year.
-
It was very late at night when I wrote reply #28, so I kept it as short as possible.
As I went to sleep, I thought of an important practical lesson that we humans should learn from the bees on the topic of nutition in our early stages of development.
About 100 years ago, young girls usually had their menarche (first period) when about 16 yrs old. As we learned more about nutrition and put these proper eating principles into practice, the age of menarche become younger and younger, going down to about 12, and perhaps even younger. Better nutrition lead to earlier and healthier development.
Young girls who are anorexic, (for whatever reason they may have) are causing themselves potentially irreparable physiological damage as they mature. This damage can have severe consequences in later years, causing all sorts of reproductive problems, among them, difficulties in becoming pregnant when they want to, maintainig a pregnancy to term and in giving birth. We know that, with bees, once the critical stages of development have passed, there is no way to repair the situation---there is no second chance to become a queen.
Although the issues are more complex in humans, there is good reason to believe that at least some of the damage anorexic girls cause themselves is residual and posssibly irreparable.
Please note that above statements are not based on specific research studies that I know of. What little research I did on the internet as I posted the above remarks shows a lot of variable and not always consistant conclusions. I have used the terms such as "may have", "can have" and "possibly", to emphasize this point. However, all agree that anorexia is highly damaging and health effecting.
-
About 100 years ago, young girls usually had their menarche (first period) when about 16 yrs old.
Well said EF
I tend to agree
-
to the original question on this thread.......new super above or below? ;D
-
Thanks to the comments, I decided to reverse the new super and put it on top. I also put a few drawn and capped frames in that super to entice the bees to start working on it. Part of the reason they may have not really started on it is because they are all foundationless frames, but they do have quite a bit of wax at the top to help them start. We will see what happens.
-
I top super, it's easier and takes less time when i'm at outyards. I also have top entrance on all hives year round. So far no problems. Jack
-
If you want nice foundationless frames, instead of a complicated work of art, you need to alternate fully drawn frames and foundationless ones.
-
Just keep in mind that you'll probably end up with frames of drone cells.
-
Drone cells in the super? I don't really care as long as they are filled with honey. The drone comb that they have built in the past has gone to the outside of the box and they have filled those with honey just fine. I crush and strain those. So far, they haven't built drone cells in my supers. I think, because that get their drone urges satisfied in the lower deeps.
-
I've seen drone brood in supers. I think it's laying workers sneaking in a small patch. I believe efmesch was talking about drone in the brood nest. Foundation-less at the wrong time and you'll have a mess.
-
Clarification of what I meant: Honey comb built in the supers, for storage, will (from my experience) almost always be built of drone cell size. Bees naturally do this because they can use less wax to produce fewer cells, which because of their larger size, will hold the same amount of honey. Simple efficiency! This will be done in a queenright colony and has nothing to do with laying workers.
Keeps who like to replace older combs in the nest, by using their newly built storage combs won't be able to use these because they will be used by the queen for drones and not for worker brood. [Unless, for some reason he is interested in raising large numbers of drones.]
If you "crush and strain" to get your honey, obviously, the size of the cells will be totally unimportant to you.
-
Good Lesson! Thanks Ef :)
-
I have not seen them build drone sized cells in the supers, and always assumed it was because they had built all the drone comb they wanted in the brood chamber... It seems I am in need of a better understanding on my part... I even use some of last years super frames for this years nucs/hives splits and starts...
-
pete~
"If you want nice foundationless frames, instead of a complicated work of art, you need to alternate fully drawn frames and foundationless ones."
yes!
ef~
"Just keep in mind that you'll probably end up with frames of drone cells."....Clarification of what I meant: Honey comb built in the supers, for storage, will (from my experience) almost always be built of drone cell size.
yes! my experience as well. in supers where i place foundationless frames for comb honey between frames of fully drawn comb as pete mentioned, the bees will always build and draw out drone sized cells for honey storage.