Add your Honey Supers!

Colonies with supers on!

This week in Minnesota will be warm and perfect for our honey bees. They will go out and gather lots of nectar, and pollen. Make sure you are adding supers, so the bees have enough room to put their collection!

If not, your bees may leave the nest ... thinking there is no room! I usually place 2 supers at once because my hives are not in my own backyard. If the nectar flow is in full swing , the honey bees can fill up a super in a couple of days!

How do I know that there is a nectar flow?

You will notice many bees going in and out of the hive (foragers) from sun up to sun down.
If you look into your colony and remove some frames, you can see a lot of fresh nectar thetas uncapped.
If your super is "brand" new, you will see fresh white wax.

How do you put your supers on?

There are many ways to place your supers. I put my section honey super just above the brood nest, after the queen excluder, then I place a couple of supers on top of that. It is easy, and does not require any movement of honey supers. I don't like moving honey supers more than I need to.

Another way is to always put your new super on top of the last brood box; you will then have to remove your first super to place your second one, and so forth! Lots of effort...but it does not seem to make any difference in the amount of honey we will get.

Beautiful frame of capped honey

Ross round (section) being capped with honey

Left side: capped honey--Right side nectar