What size super should I use for honey?

[ajharwood]

 I am wondering what everyone recommends to use for honey supers.  I am a young and able chap, so lifting won't be a problem.  Should I use shallow super, medium super or deep hive bodies for honey supers?  I first thought medium supers with nine frames, but I am now considering deep hive bodies with nine frames,  If anyone can give me a little insight on why or why not to use one or the other. Thank you!

[schawee]

welcome to the fourm.i use both medium and deeps for honey supers.shallow supers are mostly used for cut comb,but can be used .its up to you, a full deep weight is about 90 lbs full,a medium is about 50-60lbs.the cost will be cheaper using a deep.one deep =two mediums or three shallows.just do the math and make the call.         schawee

[BlueBee]

Nothing wrong with deep supers except for the weight.  There can be some advantages to having all the same size equipment like moving combs around to bait the bees up or moving brood down from supers.  It's a personal choice.  My choice is lightness, no deep supers for me due to the weight. 

[Kathyp]

i use shallows because of the weight, but i see the advantage to using all one size.  lots of folks use all mediums for brood and honey.

[Duck1968]

The extractor you use may make one more of an advantage over another. The extractor I am looking at getting will do 9 med. frames but only 3 deep frames at time.

[AllenF]

I may have been young once, but we grew up using shallows for honey supers and I still use them today.   I have over the years placed deeps over to get them drawn out and spare honey for winter time for the young hives and I will tell you that it will wear you out hauling a few of them around.   

[Michael Bush]

I ran deeps and shallows for decades.  Shallows are a nice weight to manage.  But in trying to standardize and make my maximum box weigh less I went to mediums.  Then I went to eight frame.  I prefer mediums for supers as you can extract more honey with less frames to uncap and move, than you can with shallows.  And you can use mediums for everything and it's a pretty good compromise.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslazy.htm#uniformframesize

[ajharwood]

Can you go foundationless on medium and deep supers if they are wired?

[Michael Bush]

>Can you go foundationless on medium and deep supers if they are wired?

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfoundationless.htm

Yes, wired or not wired...

[kdm]

 I use shallows because i have an old 24 frame extractor &  can put 48 shallow  frames in. I can only put 24 med. or 24 deeps in. I also have small honey flows some years and the shallow  frames fill out better.

[ajharwood]

Thanks for the feed back.  I think I am going to try foundationless deeps as long as they fit in my extractor.  If you it will be foundationless mediums.

[backyard warrior]

Food for thought.  Just remember foundationless with no wire in deeps; and when you go to extract in warm temperatures its easy to throw the comb out of the frame when extracting  Chris