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Last year was my first year beekeeping and I had only a single hive which has done very well. They expanded pretty quickly and had plenty of stores built up by late summer. I threw on a super thinking I would get them to draw it out and have a jump start for next year. They did draw it out and store honey in some of the cells but I was feeding them sugar water at the time so the honey they did store in there isn't anything I think I would want for myself and the majority of it was never capped. I pulled that super in the fall and threw the frames in the freezer to insure any possible interlopers were killed off.
This year I am setting up a second hive with bees arriving Friday. I have been unable to borrow an extractor to clean out the honey from the old frames. I was wondering if when I setup the new hive, I could add a queen excluder and set a super on top with those frames and have the new bees feed on it and clean it out? My plan had been to feed it back to the bees anyhow if I had gotten it extruded. I had considered throwing it back on the existing hive but we are in a nectar flow right now and while I am sure they are restocking the brood boxes, I am not sure if they would clean out that super before restocking it. The weather has yet to cooperate with me so I haven't been able to crack that hive open to see what they already have stored. The new brood box has no drawn comb so I don't know if that will screw them up throwing a box with drawn comb on top and my guess is that there is probably only enough honey for a few days so I would still need to leave them sugar water as I would be afraid they would run out of food before I could open the hive again.
This year I am setting up a second hive with bees arriving Friday. I have been unable to borrow an extractor to clean out the honey from the old frames. I was wondering if when I setup the new hive, I could add a queen excluder and set a super on top with those frames and have the new bees feed on it and clean it out? My plan had been to feed it back to the bees anyhow if I had gotten it extruded. I had considered throwing it back on the existing hive but we are in a nectar flow right now and while I am sure they are restocking the brood boxes, I am not sure if they would clean out that super before restocking it. The weather has yet to cooperate with me so I haven't been able to crack that hive open to see what they already have stored. The new brood box has no drawn comb so I don't know if that will screw them up throwing a box with drawn comb on top and my guess is that there is probably only enough honey for a few days so I would still need to leave them sugar water as I would be afraid they would run out of food before I could open the hive again.