honey supers in winter

[davers]

Here in California, the daytime temps are 58 degrees and night is 35 degrees. Would it be a good idea to put the extracted honey supers from last summer that were in the freezer back on to feed the bees or is it too cold or any suggestions? Thanks

[tjc1]

When you say 'extracted', do you mean that they are the wet, empty frames after you have extracted the honey from them, or do you mean that you took the full supers off of the hive and froze them?

[cao]

I would probably just wait til you needed to add a box normally.  If you put them on now when they don't need the extra space, the bees cant guard the extra frames and you give the pests room to roam.

[davers]

tjc1..cao.  the honey was extracted and the empty frames were put into the freezer. They probably have left over honey on them that the bees could use.  With winter here I don't know of any pests yet.

[Acebird]

If you put them on now you will likely kill the hive.  On a warm day the bees will go up if there is no honey in them they can starve out with all the honey below.  My advice is not to add space to the top of the hive until you see honey coming in.  You can add boxes or frames of honey but not empty space.