Hi,
What is the difference between adding a honey super to the top of a stack of honey supers or adding to the bottom of the stack of honey supers, above the brood nest?
Cheers,
Patrick
Bottom supering keeps the bees from tracking dirt across the capped comb as they go back and forth filling the new, empty super. This is particularly important when doing cut comb, since you want the caps to be as white as possible. However, it means that you have to lift off all those full supers each time you need another, and it's also difficult to tell when the hive is ready for another super.
Top supering is more convenient, especially if you're extracting...you take off the cover, check to see if you need to add a super, and if you do, you put it on, replace the cover, and you're done.
Quote from: Moonshae on June 17, 2008, 02:42:40 PM
Bottom supering keeps the bees from tracking dirt across the capped comb as they go back and forth filling the new, empty super. This is particularly important when doing cut comb, since you want the caps to be as white as possible. However, it means that you have to lift off all those full supers each time you need another, and it's also difficult to tell when the hive is ready for another super.
Top supering is more convenient, especially if you're extracting...you take off the cover, check to see if you need to add a super, and if you do, you put it on, replace the cover, and you're done.
Top supering is more convenient but it can also create a situation where the bees are less likely to go up into the new super unless baited by moving up a few frames from a lower super. Bottom supering is a lot of work, moving several full supers off and the back on is back breaking work--even when using only mediums. The way I do it is left the top super and place the new one between already full supers, this technique also has the super already baited because of the honey above it. and less troublesome as you're only removing and replacing 1 super.
If you're doing box comb or ross rounds having a full super of honey above it is the best way to get the bees to work it and it must be on a strong hive during a heavy flow.
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Top supering is more convenient but it can also create a situation where the bees are less likely to go up into the new super unless baited by moving up a few frames from a lower super. Bottom supering is a lot of work, moving several full supers off and the back on is back breaking work--even when using only mediums. The way I do it is left the top super and place the new one between already full supers, this technique also has the super already baited because of the honey above it. and less troublesome as you're only removing and replacing 1 super.
If you're doing box comb or ross rounds having a full super of honey above it is the best way to get the bees to work it and it must be on a strong hive during a heavy flow.
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I have a hive that was new last year. They had enough honey and came through winter fine but never moved into the upper collection super. This year they are strong and active, but I have none (relatively) in the upper super. Tell me more about baiting, please. Do I just load a frame with honey into the upper box to entice them up? Is there some other reason that they may not be coming throught the queen excluder?
take off the queen excluder until they have started to draw the foundation (or keep it off entirely)
they are not moving up because of the excluder
or if you have a same size frame that has honey already, "baiting" would be just what you described, putting this frame in the undrawn super to encourage the bees to move up/ or move through the excluder
Quote from: bmjudd on July 31, 2008, 10:39:00 PM
I have a hive that was new last year. They had enough honey and came through winter fine but never moved into the upper collection super. This year they are strong and active, but I have none (relatively) in the upper super. Tell me more about baiting, please. Do I just load a frame with honey into the upper box to entice them up? Is there some other reason that they may not be coming throught the queen excluder?
Most of the books encourage use of the queen excluder (aka honey excluder) but they universially fail to mention that the bees must begin working the super before it is put on or that baiting with partial frames of honey is necessary to drawn them through the excluder.
BTW, I never use a queen excluder for its intended purpose and always bait the super. I use all mediums so I take 2 frames of honey from the top box and move them into the center of the new super. Replacing the honey supers with empty frames. If the top box is also a brood box this also helps in curbing swarming. Do a search on open brood chambers and queen excluder usage here on the forum, you'll find a lot of info on both topics.
How does using top entrances change all of this? the way mine are set up the first thing they run into as they enter the top of the hive is the new super.
Alfred
Quote from: alfred on August 02, 2008, 12:10:55 AM
How does using top entrances change all of this? the way mine are set up the first thing they run into as they enter the top of the hive is the new super.
Alfred
Good, that will get them to work it as bees hate a void, they'll draw out the frames and fill it. Baiting isn't necessary in that case but I've found that baiting is always helpful, necessary or not.