Honey Supers

[Fergmeister]

My girls are filling my brood boxes.  Is there a too late in the season time to add supers and an excluder?

[Intheswamp]

If there is a flow on and they're running out of room then you need to give them room.  If you're feeding them and they're running out of room stop feeding.  If you have a flow going and you decide to add a super would you be adding drawn comb or foundation?  If you will be using foundation I would not add the excluder until the bees have started drawing out a fair amount of comb as they might not go through the excluder for only foundation.  If you're using drawn comb you could go ahead and install the excluder.  Personally, I wouldn't add the excluder at all.  Once the bees create a honey dome above the brood nest the queen seldom ventures across that stretch of honey...the honey itself must seem like a barren wasteland to the queen acting like a queen excluder to her (most of the time ;) ).

If they need room...give it to them. :)

Ed

[Fergmeister]

Thanks Ed,  Upon close inspection last night, I see they have not even begun construction of comb in the upper brood box yet so the super addition would be really premature.  The middle and lower boxes are full of brood and honey. So no excluder, no super yet.
Chuck

[hjon71]

You might consider moving the honey up to the top brood box and checkerboarding the middle and bottom boxes with the new frames. That should get them working in the whole hive.