I hope to be up to about 50 hives by the end of this year, 2 deeps per hive. I will be using medium supers and could extract some supers and put back on during the year.
Depends on what you want to produce,(comb or extract honey) and what kind of weather you have for a honey flow?(also hive strength)?.I would recomend a minimum of 3 med. per hive,and a few extras on hand.Jack
I asked the same question at a beeks get together and what they said made sense. Since the bees will have to draw out all the comb AND fill it, they recommended 2 new supers per hive. That would be about 100 lbs of surplus! (My math may be a little off, but close.)
Depends on how busy your bees are, but I would recommend min. of three per and then if running 50 hives at least 25 extra on top of that. If you have two loaded supers on a hive and need to pull them for extraction then you will be needing the third to place on it while you extract the two you pulled. You are better off having extra boxes that you can throw on a hive then losing out on a crop because you didn't plan for enough supers.
Daddy and I were moving some hive bodies around this evening and figuring what we needed. With just 50 hives that is 100 deeps and 150 to 200 supers. It amazes us how the people with thousands can keep up.
I am not for north of you in Pontotoc County. I have around 50 hives. Sorry to say this past summer I did not need many supers at all. Bad year in my area.
In a good year I will have hives that can fill 4-5 supers and some that will fill none. I keep a close check on my hives and when I have full sealed supers I extract and return them the same day. I build all my boxes, so if I see the need I just build some more. I probably have between 100 and 150 small supers. Good Luck!
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