I have a question, but FIRST i want to thank this forum for being my resource for getting ready for fall and for being so KIND all the time, it means so much to have so much knowledge all in one location and to have those so williing to help.
My question is this.....do any of you take the supers that haven't been capped (for we've really had a lack of rain and resources they needed to cap off all the supers so we've decided to feed these back to them) About a year ago someone mentioned and we DID it then, about feeding back the supers that are on the existing hive to the bees in THAT hive, suppose to cut down on the fighting and keep from spreading disease if one hive has something wrong i'm not aware of.
My question is this.....do you invert the inner cover and then leave the super on the top of the hive, and they will carry the honey down to the hive body??? we are not spinning any more honey and want to feed back what little they got this last collection back them, NOT to mention the asters have started blooming and the smell of the honey is rather, uhm bitter smelling, but i know that is the asters for i've had that experience before...but i wonderred if there is another means of feeding back the super to the hive on which it sits properly......I know one told me to invert the inner cover....but do i leave on the queen excluder??? do they automatically carry the stored honey in the super down to the hive frames??? I am ready to do this so any help whatsoever would greatly be appreciated...
AND MOST OF ALL THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR PROMPT RESPONSES AND ANSWERS AND HELP, THIS IS THE GREATEST FORUM OF ALL....AND THE KINDNESS EMITS FROM JUST READING THE POSTS....THANK YOU SO MUCH....
ANXIOUSLY AWAITING KNOWLEDGE....
atthelake22
If you have excess space in your set ups, pull frames and give them to hives that need them, and consolidate boxes.
If you invert the inner cover, it allows extra space for the bees to build comb and you really don't want that.
...JP
You may want to check out this thread.
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,17417.0.html
While it seems common to put super above inner cover (regular orientation of inner cover) so bees can clean them out, there isn't any guarantee they won't work up there instead of moving it downstairs.
It didn't work for me this fall as all the ladies did is continue to fill up the supers even when they had bundles of room downstairs to fill up for winter. They didn't have enough flow to actually finish the job, so now I am going to have to spin off the nectar just to clean up my supers for winter storage.
I am a total clueless beginner, but probably the way this "super over inner cover" business works best is right after you extract and you just have honey on the frames and tiny amounts left on the comb and you leave the supers on maybe for 2 days max for the bees to clean off the remnant honey before storage.
Again, total newbie here, so take that for what it is worth.