How many supers to winter over?

[Hobie]

I have heard that you should get your colonies down to about 2 deeps to winter over. I have my queenless bees from a bee-tree, now happily (I hope)living in a 10 frame deep with some tied-in comb and some drawn frames. I wanted to combine them with another colony that is 2 deeps and a shallow now. Is this too much? I really didn't want to stack 3 deeps (for lifting weight) but don't know what else to do.

[iddee]

I have had hives 5 and 6 deeps high for the summer. Go ahead and combine, then in the summer and fall, remove any empty or nearly empty boxes you find. The number of boxes in the winter doesn't matter, but you do want to remove most of the empty space so that the hive, however many boxes, is 80% or more full going into winter. It's the empty space that causes trouble, not the overall space.

[Dave W]

Hobie . . .

If you combine, how many frames of bees will the hive have? A 3-deep hive can handle 20 frames covered w/ bees (about 60,000).

I overwinter in 3 deeps. All 10 frames in top "food chamber" gets filled w/ stores and then becomes heavy. Middle deep - about 40% brood, 50% stores is usually not heavy, and bottom deep w/ mostly brood doesnt weight much either. By the time the hive is loaded up, the brood nest doesnt need to be dismantled, so I dont find much "heavy lifting" needed.

[Hobie]

I'm guessing the existing colony has maybe 12 or so frames of bees. Not sure... the guy I'm getting it from recently took off a 75% empty super. The orphans from the tree... maybe 2 or 3 frames. They could probably fit in less space, but there is some brood and honey in the cut-out comb, which I didn't want to take away.

[Michael Bush]

They "get down" to whatever they do. If it's three deeps or two deeps or one deep. Give them a box more than the bees actually could be packed into. I overwinter some of mine in anything from one to five eight frame medium boxes depending on the size of the cluster. Most are three boxes. But if they were Italians most would be five boxes.