Any harm leaving supers on during winter?

[cpekarek]

I have 4 hives started from packages this spring. Each hive has 2 deeps and one medium super. I am 25 miles west of Chicago and temperatures have been above normal, 60? plus for highs and 40? plus for lows. There are very few plants in bloom as we have had 3 nights in the mid 30?'s which shut growth down for the year. I inspected last week and planned on removing the supers but found each hive had about 70 lbs of honey in the 2 brood boxes and 30-40 lbs of honey in each supers.  All of the hives have an estimated 40 to 50 thousand bees. The bees aren't moving honey from the supers to the brood boxes as I expected. Is there any harm in leaving a super of honey on top of the hives all winter? I use SBB and my top inner covers have 4 small vents.

[JackM]

Just makes more space for them to have to keep warm.  Myself I would remove them.

[Michael Bush]

Figure out how much food they need and remove the rest.  As Jack says, it's just more for them to heat and it will all be crystallized in the spring.

[tjc1]

When I did this my first year, the queen had moved up there in the spring and started laying, so then it took me another year to be able to get that super off (only an issue if you want to maintain your supers for extractable honey only).

[Acebird]

For me it made an excellent hive to split by the box but I use all mediums.  You have deeps and a medium super so what is your plan in the spring when the brood nest is near the top?  For those of us with just a few hives having different equipment for the brood and honey storage is a pain in the butt when things don't go as planned.
At this late in the game I think you are screwed if there is not enough honey in the two deeps.

[cpekarek]

I checked the hives this morning. 40% of the nectar in the supers is not capped. I'm going to give them 2 more weeks to see if they move any honey down. If they don't, I will leave the supers on for the winter since I need 80 to 100 lbs. of honey to get the hives through the Chicago winter. If the queen starts laying in the supers, I will convert them to splits in the spring. I was planning on expanding next spring anyway so I will start to use mediums for my brood boxes when I add hives.

Thanks.

[bwallace23350]

Thakns for the good information.