How soon to add second box

[John Schwartz]

Hi all,

First time installing some nucs yesterday. Pollen is heavy (not sure about nectar) and weather is going to be warm for some days. The nucs were strong and the hives are bubbling over. Wondering -- is it too soon to add a second box?

[pollenchucker]

Depends on how drawn out your bottom frames are. But if youre in a nuc and you want to be collecting honey shouldn't you be moving your colony into a big hive first?  Before you start adding a second brood chamber and honey supers and all that?  But as I understand it you add your second story when the first one is 70% drawn out.  Even then you will have to wait a while before they get to it.  Because they will be working on producing and caring for brood first.  When you are just starting out it takes a while, cause I'm still waiting on mine to move up too.
-pc

[John Schwartz]

Depends on how drawn out your bottom frames are. But if youre in a nuc and you want to be collecting honey shouldn't you be moving your colony into a big hive first? 

Sorry I wasn't clear... they're already into 10-frame boxes now. :) Thx for advice.

[iddee]

Same as I told eri......
When 8 or more frames are full, "by weight", then super. Not until then

[sc-bee]

>When 8 or more frames are full, "by weight",

Help me out here Iddee.

[iddee]

Not full of empty cells, but full of brood, honey, pollen. Lift each one and look at it. If it looks and fills like it is fairly full, then it is. If there are mostly empty cells and it is very light, then it isn't full.

[Brian D. Bray]

The 80/20 or 70/30 method is to add a super when the last box added (or 1st box if nuc, swarm, or package) is 80% full.  Full can be considered as: bees, comb, or honey/brood.  I like to add mine when 6 out of 8 frames are wall to wall bees at inspection as the foragers will fill the remaining space at night.  That is one of the reasons for the rule, if a beekeeper checks  his bees during the day, as much as 25% or the bees can be away from the hive at any one time.  So finding 8 out of 10 frames full of bees, honey, etc, means the bees are at the point of being crowded at the end of the work day.

If supering with a super of combs or partial combs during a honey flow, put on 2 or 3 as the bees will spread out the nectar through all 3 supers while curing it.  As it cures it gets consolidated as near the brood area as possible and the bees will still use all the drawn or partially drawn combs to cure the nectar.

If putting on frames of foundation or foundationless, 1 super at a time is usually enough as the bees must convert 1/2 their forage into was to make comb.  That slows them down, on filling combs.

During the heaviest honey flow you have, double the above numbers of supers.

[John Schwartz]

The 80/20 or 70/30 method is to add a super when the last box added (or 1st box if nuc, swarm, or package) is 80% full...

Thanks much for you excellent advice, Bryan.

-John