Winter has snuck up on me

[Quint Randle]

So I'm here Utah ... and with vacation and other things happening, it's now October and I haven't pulled the supers on four or five of my hives (just one per hive). I don't need the honey personally.

What should I do?

1) Hope for some warm weather and extract? (But that may not happen)

2) Leave them on? (Does that create to much area for them to keep warm over winter?

3) Just pull them and store them until they need them in late winter?

4) Maybe put an inner cover on between the top brood and the super?

Quint

[J-Bees]

since you don't need the honey let it there: then next spring do your thing.

[Quint Randle]

since you don't need the honey let it there: then next spring do your thing.

But will that create too much of a space for the bees to keep warm? (two deeps AND a super?)

Quint

[J-Bees]

Two deeps and a super is what I let mine have.

[J-Bees]

you may read this post if your worried:

Wintering a single 10 deep in Maine

[KQ6AR]

If you have excluder's on the hives you might want to remove them. If the bees need to move up for the honey in winter, she'd be left behind.

[Quint Randle]

I don't use excluders... so I'm fine there. So the cluster itself maintains the critical mass and temperature and it's not really affected by the size of the actual hive?

Q

[BDJ]

I've read somewhere that a good guideline is that if the honey super is over half full leave it on with no excluder. If it is less than half full it is just extra space and to take it off. I don't remember the source.
BDJ

[JOHNYOGA2]

Randle,
The bees don't heat the space inside the hive, they heat the cluster. A cluster of bees in a three deep hive require no more energy for heat then the same size cluster in three mediums.