When using an escape to allow the bees to leave a
honey super prior to taking it away for honey extraction,
can you stack 2 or 3 supers and let them leave through this
single escape?
Or do you need to proceed with 1 super at a time?
Thanks,
In using a bee escape to get bees out of the supers do the following.
1. insert a bee escape in the hole in the inner cover.
2. Place the inner cover w/bee escape in place between the brood boxes and the supers, placing the telescopic top on the top of the hive (the bees won't have time to glue it down with propolis).
3. Come back 24-48 hrs later and remove the supers. You may notice the hive is bearded--this means the bees are out of the supers.
I will often put an empty or new super on top of the brood boxes before putting on the bee escape to make room in the hive for the excess bees which are being compressed into a smaller space--hence the bearding.
I never had any luck with the "porter" bee escapes. I have had luck with the triangular bee escapes.
Thanks for your reply's,
I also found the extraction question thread
started on July 30th to be very helpful.