[Nicksotherhoney]

Bees made it through the winter... no signs of swarming.. I reversed the brood boxes..put an empty super with new sheets of wax in it..now how to I get them to make honey??? I’ve watched multiple times Michael Palmers sustainable apiary lectures... it makes sense but what or how does the backyard hobbyist achieve that( making surplus honey)

 

[orthoman]

Well, do they have nectar sources? If so, and the hive is thriving and growing, they should start collecting the nectar and making honey from it.

 

[beemandan]

In my opinion the main things are healthy bees, nectar flow and swarm management.

 

[bushpilot]

Do you have a local beekeepers association/club? My guess is you will make more honey if you join them. It will help you learn how to manage the bees for your particular location.

That said, healthy bees + good forage + no swarming + adequate supers = honey.

 

[JWPalmer]

You may need to manage your brood boxes and supers. Assuming you put the top brood box below the empty one, the bees may move into the upper box and lay it up, or they might fill it with nectar and not even touch the super above it. A 10 frame deep can hold about 75# capped honey. Ideally, they will lay most of the top deep with brood and create a honey dome so the queen will not lay up in the super.

 

[Gino45]

You may need to manage your brood boxes and supers. Assuming you put the top brood box below the empty one, the bees may move into the upper box and lay it up, or they might fill it with nectar and not even touch the super above it. A 10 frame deep can hold about 75# capped honey. Ideally, they will lay most of the top deep with brood and create a honey dome so the queen will not lay up in the super.

Good response. I would go a step further and ask: are you using only deeps? For supers also? Or a different size, mediums perhaps. The easiest way to get the bees to move up is to move a frame they are using up. This is hard to do with deeps to mediums. What you could do is introduce a medium frame or 2 into the middle of the top brood box. Once bees are using it. you could move the comb(s) up into the honey super. The bees are sure to follow.

Good luck! It's more difficult to do these manipulations if you have only 1 hive, but they can be done.

 

[Nicksotherhoney]

I’ve just been using deeps. Could I paint the frames with sugar syrup to entice the bees to move up? Yes, there is a bee club in my area and haven’t been able to attend due to work schedule.

 

[Clayton Huestis]

If your using all deeps just pull some capped brood up into the super. And feed the foundations down. Bees will move up for brood and now its baited and they recognize the space. If you actually have different size supers at some point just do a cut down split like in comb honey production and you force the bees up into the supers. Once you have a few boxes of honey supers drawn out you can bait all your supers with 2-3 frames of drawn comb.