Ross Rounds

[Chef Isaac]

I hope this will work....

Last Monday, I took my hives up to the fireweeds in the mountains. The flow should be good this yeat cause we have had a good mix of rain and sun.

Most people just stack supers on and leave them for 4 to 5 weeks and than pick up their hives and take them home.

I took two sets of Ross Rounds up there and placed one on each hive. One hive was a double deep.... the other was three westerns.

I am wondering if I should have drove the bees done in each colony to make them more crowded. My thinking is that when the bloom is on, nectar comes in sooo quick and they will fill the ross rounds.

Any thoughts?

[jean-marc]

The bees will plug out, then they will go to the rounds. In my opinion this will be a very poor fireweed year. Way too much rain. I could be wrong and hope so for your sake, but...

Jean-Marc

[Dan Williamson]

Double deep or more is too much space in my opinion.

You are better off making it one deep and then the RR super. They will fill the 2nd deep with nectar before they will touch your RR. At least that has been my experience.

[Chef Isaac]

Jean:

I do hope the firewwed wll be good. We have had, what I think, a good mix for the fireweed in this area. I was up in the mountains yesterday and a lot of the bloom in the lower half and just starting in the upper half.

[xC0000005]

The bees will plug out, then they will go to the rounds. In my opinion this will be a very poor fireweed year. Way too much rain.

We've been on the other end of the spectrum here - I expect the good soaking we got should get things going. The question is whether or not we'll get enough sun this late. Fireweed ought to be about 1/2 done by now. It's just getting started. Maybe we'll have a late, long flow, and maybe we'll just have a poor one. I hope it isn't a poor one.

[Chef Isaac]

I hope it is not a poor one either :)

[Bee Draggle]

I put a Ross Round super on one of my double deep hives along with two shallow honey supers. It is a strong colony and they filled all three supers and I got 32 very nice rounds of light honey. The trick is a strong colony and a good flow.