Morning everyone. I have a small problem; although a good one, nonetheless a perceived problem. I hope you can help with your thoughts. I'm in North Texas and I brought home 3 NUCs in late April. Two of the hives have 2, fully capped mediums and a third that is about 80% full. Since these frames were all new foundation, I'm using 10 frames in each super. I put the latest addition on a week and a half ago. They are still very active; coming and going, so I'm planning on adding 1 more super to each of them today. Here's my question: Do I remove the capped supers and store them for extracting or do I just leave them and keep adding more supers until they stop filling them and let them winter through with all they fill? Although I'm not certain what fall will bring, I'm pretty sure they will be able to store more then. And, I'm pretty certain they will not need 4 or more mediums to over winter. It took me by suprise. I didn't anticipate this on first year hives and I have no extracting equipment yet. Your thoughts are appreciated!
I assume you have two deep hive bodies then the three med supers. You can take the three med off for your self ,provided your deeps have 80 to 100 lbs total weight going into winter. But you don't have any equipment to harvest the honey other than crush and stain.Honey dose not go bad so you can keep it on your hives. you could use it to help make splits in the spring next year. Congrads on your success your first year.
If you are SHB country then you need to extract as soon as you removed the capped honey.
I meant to say if you have SHB in your area.
In MS we can't store capped honey supers due to these little buggers.
I'm jealous....my hive is now 12 months old (2nd year), and I may be lucky to get 20 lbs. for myself......we'll see....hive is strong...must be 50,000 bees in there now...but the honey just isn't building as quick as I had hoped..Brood is in bottom 2 medium supers..I have 2 mediums for honey on top of that..I hope to take one and leave one for them..still lots of room to fill.. Congrats again!
In Michigan we leave the honey alone till middle of July or early Aug. Then take what we can, that leaves the bees the rest of the season to back fill.
You didn't say if your using all med. or not. I use all mediums and don't think about honey till I get too 5 supers. Last year I pulled 75lbs of off of a couple first year hives.
Thanks everyone for your input and thanks Wetland. I wasn't planning on running 2 deeps. I had pretty good success with single brood chambers in South Texas a number of years back. And winters in Ft. Worth are just a few degrees colder. So the current configuration is one deep brood chamber and 4 medium supers. What would be the advantage of running 2 deeps in warmer climates, Wetland?
MustbeeNuts, that was my practice as well. I guess the real problem is that I just don't have the equipment and wasn't sure what to do with those stores. If I took them off, I was concerned about ants. No problem with SHB....yet! Saving it for splits is something I never considered, Wetland. I've been out of beekeeping for a number of years and just got back into it this year. In the past, when the supers were full and capped, I'd rob them leaving only the uncapped boxes for food. Never had a problem down in Houston with them making sufficient fall stores for winter.
Thanks again, y'all. I welcome the ideas.