[cdanderson]

Italians
one deep/one super

I'm having trouble deciding on the best time to add my supers. I have both DC and foundation available. Lets say, I have brood and honey in the deep (not completely full though) and the food super is full of brood. Normally, I dont like to add my honey supers before the bees fill their super with honey. This helps block out the queen and ensures that the bees get their honey before I get mine.

However, this year the flow is about to start (which is fast and furious here - and then mostly over for the year) and my supers are full of brood not honey. If I add supers for me.... are the bees likely to still back fill that food super as the brood hatches ?

thanks

 

[sgwjr1979]

I think as long as you have 80% worked (meaning 16 to 18 out of the 20 frames in 2 10 frame brood chambers) that you should go ahead and put on your honey super. I would think that once the bees get some emerging brood, they will go ahead and store some honey in their's once yours are full. I WOULDN'T add anymore super's until you're sure they're storing for themselves...Just a newbie's thoughts though.

 

[cdanderson]

I should clarify that these are established hives from previous years. All drawn comb... its just that they have laid the top (food super) full of brood and cant store honey there until it hatches. One thought is to add a queen excluder (even though I dont use them normally) and then remove it once brood has emerged and a honey barrier has been stored...:scratch:

 

[Beeslave]

Add supers. Sounds like they will swarm on you if you don't. They will push the queen down later or you could drive them down and place excluder on after they are working in the supers.

 

[Michael Bush]

You never want them to run out of room in the buildup. Even then, they may try to swarm, but if they run out of room it's a given... 80% is the generally accepted rule and it works well. Anytime you have 80% of what they have filled in the buildup, you can double the space from there...

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm