Sure - that's how some beekeepers choose to operate. I've seen videos of guys using a blower to remove bees from the honey-combs before stashing them into a separate box (with a lid !).
LJ

 

For our harvest last year, I went through the candidate supers one frame at a time, brushed the bees off, and placed the frames into a separate 5-frame box to carry them into the house for extraction. If you have a convenient place for them, you could do what you suggest. Remember that if you place them in an air-conditioned room, the honey will cool off and become more viscous, harder to extract.

Michael

 

Using a bee escape board removes anything "overwhelming" from the process.

You lift the super off, install the bees escape board (make sure it's right side up), replace the super and go inside and have your dinner. Come back the next day to a box that's nearly empty of bees.

Lift the box off and either take it immediately out of the yard, or set it down and cover it tightly so bees can't find their way back in.

Remove the bee escape board, add another super, or just the inner cover and the top.

Done.

Removing a few frames at a time can be more vexing since you have to brush the bees off each frame while still in the bee yard. And the bees are quite single-minded about staying on their precious honey frames.

Storing the frames indoors has its risks: if you have small hive beetles in the colony their eggs may already be on the combs and they will hatch out and create a mess. A short stay in your freezer will kill the eggs, however. Afterward the frames can be stored at room temps in a big plastic box that can be kept sealed from re-infestation and also from wax moths.

Nancy

 

I guess I’m trying to kill two birds with one stone…

I don’t have any of the Fischer’s Bee-Quick or such product and to purchase just that from a mail order place would be an insane price—shipping raises the price likely by 50% if one orders just one product. I know it would last for a good many frame removals, but I thought I would just try the single/multiple frame removal first…

But, after reading the last post, it might be a bit more hassle having to deal with “angry” bees each time…

Always seems there are lots of opinions to choose from. Guess I could try the single/multiple frame removal and see how it works. I then could do the bee escape also…

Thanks…BCB

 

In my case, first harvest/extraction ever for me, last year: I pulled 37 (?) frames and didn't get one bee in the house. These were mediums. Cover the box you're transferring frames into, top _and_ bottom... But I'm just reporting my experience, not insisting what I did was best. I thought from your description that you might have only a few dozens of frames to process.

I intend in no way to say my procedure is superior to the advice Nancy/enjambres provides.

Michael

 

I just wait till the super is full or should I say supers I don't waste time doing a frame at a time.

 

I only run a couple of hives (one now) in my third year. I pretty much always do it this way. It's easy and quick and I don't get overwhelmed with a big job all at once. A few frames at a time. Just give the frames a hard shake to get most of the bees off, and blow or brush the few remainders.

 

Took a look in the super an hour ago and noted that 8 of the 10 frames are probably 80% capped and the cells that aren’t are full of nectar. So, I didn’t remove any. Figured I'd let them another week and they will likely be filled. I looked in it a week ago and there may have only been half as many cells filled and capped. So, another week might be to my advantage…

One quick question: The caps are white. Will this be o.k. to extract this in about 4 weeks when the person who is going to do it for me will start his extractions?...

Now I am going to post another question in the “Swarms, Trap-outs, and Cut-outs” forum. Take a peek at it if you have time…

Thanks…BCB

 

One quick question: The caps are white.

Fresh wax/new wax is nice & white. Will be fine in 4 weeks. You might consider adding another super now.

 

From what I took from the first post, the O.P. has a hive, perhaps two but probably one. He seems to be asking about total frame count in the few dozens, just like my 37 (or so) frames last year. Maybe he'll get more honey than I did. I mostly made nucs last year, with honey enough for my family and some gifts to others.

 

Yep, only one hive. I was hoping to capture a swarm, but have had no luck at that. I guess maybe I should have got another split from the guy I got the 1st one from...

I put the present super on about a month ago. It was all new stuff--No comb. So the bees had to do all the work necessary this year...

I will have at least 10 frames, and likely a few more as we still have 3 weeks until extraction...

Rather than add another super, I thought just by removing and replace frames, it would allow the ones partially filled to be completed. Don't know this...

Regardless, I will get whatever amount of honey a person can expect from at least a dozen frames...

Thanks...BCB

 

Pulling capped frames one by one is not hard. It's just a fiddly task and you have to get the bees off of them when they really don't want to leave.

When I do it, I have a target /collection box for the frames set a little bit away from the where the hives are. It has a political sign under it and a good lid. I set it about 30 feet away and around the corner of a line of evergreens from my hive stands.

Pull the frame and give it a good shake over the hive to get most of the bees off and back inside the stack. I find a bee brush isn't the best way to get the rest of them off. I use my fingers with my hand in nitrile gloves so I can be as gentle and precise as possible. Leather gloves won't work for this - too clumsy and dangerous for the bees. If you're still using leather gloves, a bee brush will be safer for them.

I don't try to get all the bees off near the hives where more will hop on as fast as I can get the others off. Instead I use the walk over to the collection box to keep brushing and shaking bees off the frame while I am walking so that I arrive at the box with nearly none still on the frame.

If the target/collection box is away from where the bees are swirling around in a tizzy you will have fewer trying to get in the box while you're sticking each frame in.

It's very useful to have a helper who can cover up the super with a temp cover (a plastic political sign is excellent for this) as soon as you have pulled and shaken off the frame to keep the rest of the honey and the stack secure. And then can hustle around ahead of you to the target/collection box and stand by ready to whisk the cover off as soon as you've got the rest of the bees off. The target/collection box cover needs to be more bee-tight than just a political sign, but it can be something as simple as a piece of plywood. The helper should be comfortable working with a lot of bees flying around them, though not necessarily a lot of angry, intent-on-revenge, bees. It's just not the right job for a complete newbie who might be unnerved.

Re-covering the super with the remaining frames in it is very important when harvesting frame by frame. Particularly later on in the season when robbing pressures are higher and harvesting like this can set off a major problem.

Your mention of Bee-Quick alerted me to the fact that we may not be talking about the same thing when referring to a bee-escape board. You may be thinking of a fume board with a felt bottom, which uses the stink of something like Bee-Quick to drive the bees down and out of the supers.

The bee escape board I was thinking of uses a physical maze to move the bees in one direction (downward) and out of the supers and then in the short run (overnight) they can't figure out how to get back up and into the super, leaving it empty. I find them very useful for a non-aggressive way to move bees out of a box, for any reason. For instance when I need to treat with OAV and I want to treat all the bees and at the same time block off the supers during treatment I just stick a bee escape board under the supers the night before and by morning bees and supers are separated. A maze-style bee escape would be easy to make for anyone who could do basic carpentry. I'm sure there are designs, and pictures online. You can also buy a patented little gizmo that snaps into the oval center hole of an inner cover that works the same, but I have never used one of those.

Here's a link to both a fume board and triangle bee escape board: https://www.betterbee.com/pc_combin...pe|Or|searchlike~ p.child_rollup_search_terms~escape)&search_keyword=bee escape

The suggestion to add another super as soon as possible is being made both to increase your current harvest potential and to protect you against losing the hive due to swarming because the bees start to feel crowded. At this time of year the crowding risk, as a prompt for swarming, is higher. Once the frames in a super are 80% drawn and being worked on (and that's well before they are actually capped) it's a good idea to add another box. This is also the time of year when they will very readily draw comb which is enormously useful. I wouldn't waste that opportunity. If the current super is full, you might find it useful to under-super the next one, meaning to place it below the full super. I under-supered with deeps and just foundation about 9 days ago and on the strong flow the bees drew out all the frames and filled more than half of them. A remarkable amount of new comb. even for my strong hives.

Nancy

 

My concern with you pulling one frame at a time when the box is so full is that you may wait too long for the bees comfort and they will swarm. They need more expansion space if they are as full as you mention. Another super will provide that space and then you can pull frames slowly as they are capped. Have you checked the brood box recently? They may already be in swarm mode. If so, split them before they seal the queen cup.

 

As we grew our bee colony count, we went thru all variations of removing bees from frames to be capped.

In the first year, we didn't get any honey to extract. In the next couple of years, we would go to the bee yard with an empty box and a brush, pick out candidate frames, brush the bees off then put them in the empty box covered with a towel. We would come back to the house with anywhere between 4 and a dozen frames to extract in the 2 frame extractor we used at the time.

It was about year 5 when we graduated from 'remove frames' to 'remove boxes'. First time I tried bee escapes I really didn't understand how to use them properly, I put the bee escape on with a fume board, expecting the box to be empty of bees in half an hour. BIG MISTAKE. What I ended up with was a bee escape so plugged with bees they couldn't get out. Then I tried the fume board without the escape, it worked ok, but, not as well as I had hoped, and left an awful smell in the supers.

So then we tried blowing the bees. I was only doing 4 boxes, 2 each off of 2 colonies, and blowing them with the leaf blower worked well, but sure did get us a crowd of angry bees in the air. I thought I had it figured out now, so for the next pull we went to the back lot with a dozen colonies to pull honey off of, and brought the blower. I can almost guarantee, the first time you blow bees from a couple dozen supers in one go, will the last time you want to do it that way. The cloud of angry bees in the air wasn't just a small managable cloud anymore.

In year 7, I learned the correct way to use a bee escape, and it revolves around understanding how the inner workings of the hive go for day to day activities. Foragers bring nectar to the entrance where it's picked up by house bees who eventually move it up to the top. In time, those same bees now move down to the bottom to fetch another load of nectar. The key here is the words 'in time'. in year 7 we tried the bee escapes again, but used differently this time. We place the bee escape under the supers we want to pull, making sure there is enough space below the escape to hold all the bees. For the spring honey flow, this means putting an empty box under the escape. It is important that there are no cracks to provide an entrance into the supers above the escape, painters tape is your friend in this case. Come back in 2 or 3 days, and the honey supers will now be mostly devoid of bees, maybe a couple dozen left in each super.

As you start out with bees, pulling honey is a process that you graduate up thru in stages. Initially, harvest is done 'by the frame'. Only when you get to a larger colony count, and supers are going on as all drawn comb do you start to think about harvesting 'by the box'. It's the same with extracting. We started out with a 2 frame extractor, so our mindset was always 'by the frame'. Only when we graduated to the 18 frame extractor did we start thinking in terms of 'by the box'.

ofc, it doesn't stop there. When you get to a reasonable colony count and are using escapes, the first thing you realize, escapes are a lot of work. First you lift the full boxes off, then you set the escape, now you left those boxes back up on the hive, and it's higher now with the empty under the escape. Come back a couple days later and lift them off again to go onto the truck. Finally when you get home, lift them off the truck and into the extracting facility. That's 4 lifts for every heavy box, and now you start hunting for a piece of equipment that'll take the back work out of that part of the process....

For just a few hives, I would say that brushing individual frames then using a small (2 to 6 frame) extractor is the right way to go. When you get up over half a dozen hives you may want to start thinking about harvesting 'by the box', but, that doesn't work out to well if you aren't using boxes that arrive to the hive with drawn comb. When you get up to a dozen hives with 2 or 3 drawn supers in inventory for each, then you will probably want to be using a larger extractor that fits with a 'by the box' harvesting regime. IMHO, bee escapes are not really suitable for part of your harvest process until you get to the point of harvesting 'by the box'. And when you reach the point that it's multiple boxes per colony, my opinion today is, bee escapes are the easiest way to get bees out of the boxes. BUT, they come with the penalty of multiple lifts per heavy box, and for a yard away from home, it's two trips for the honey harvest.

 

O.K. Having read these comments, some a couple of times, it seems that with only one hive, I was hoping for 2 but that hasn’t happened yet, removing frames might be the way using a brush to chase the bees and having the wife carry them to a "safe" location and keep them covered. I made an escape, but it might just hang on the wall until I get all of this figured out, or maybe I won’t need it…

So, it also seems that my bees may be getting crowed as mentioned and maybe an under super might be needed. This seems logical but can you get to much space in a hive?...

Will the bees walk over the empty foundations to get to the ones that are 80%+ filled and finish them before they start on the new foundations? Or am I just going to end up with comb and honey in bits and pieces on all foundations?...

We beginners sure have/create dilemmas! But, I sure would hate to lose what we have worked fairly hard to keep going the past year…

I remember as a kid over a ½ century ago, there was a guy who had a dozen or so hives in the field next to our house. Mr. Milik the Bee Man we called him. His hives were tipped almost over. He propped them up with short logs or rocks or whatever he could find. Most were completely surrounded by weeds that nearly concealed them. I the winter, they would be almost covered by snow that had drifted. Pretty crude by some keeper’s hives I have seen since we started our try a bit over a year ago. Yet, this guy had an old beat-up pickup truck and he sold honey by the roadside at a couple of locations. I remember gallon glass jugs of the stuff. He always had a crowd waiting. I wonder how much care he actually took of his hives. I wonder how many he lost. He made a living doing it…

Oh well, back to now…

Thanks all. Keep posting, I keep reading…

BCB

 

Decision Day…

My only super is FULL. We plan on extracting during the 1st week of July, or thereabout…

I thought about removing several frames at a time, BUT maybe putting a new super on might be better?...

Should I put the super under the FULL one or on top?...

I sort of have a bad feeling about this hive—can’t really say why either, just a feeling…

Thanks…BCB

 

Bad feeling? Did the number of bees go down? Did you make them swarm by not having another super? I put supers under the full and I don't wait for the first to get full. Strong colonys will get two.

 

Did they backfill the brood nest with honey? Yes, they will finish the top box. Bees naturaly work top to bottom.

 

You seem really overwhelmed and anxious about the hive. You can pull single frames or pull the whole box. You can extract frames that aren't fully capped as.long as you check moisture.

Decappong and spinning 10 frames out shouldn't take more than 30 minutes. It seems like you are overthinking a pretty simple task. Just get in there and do it.

 

Well, I was a bit confused as to what to do with the full super I have on my hive. (8 frames completely full and capped and 2 frames mostly drawn comb and much nectar in place) This is my first year so I am still learning…

I certainly didn’t make them swarm, and I think there are plenty of bees. I included (maybe) a pic of the top of the filled super. There seems to be lots of bees?...

I got advice to do several things, and I suspect all are correct. More than one way to skin a cat, so to speak…

I texted the guy I got the bees from and he said to put an empty super with frames and foundations under the full one—So I did that. I ultimately will go on his opinion, but I will still try to get other thoughts on many aspects of this hobby…

I really wasn’t sure how difficult that would be moving everything. But, it turned out I probably could have done it without even wearing protective clothing…

So, it’s done now. Hopefully I will get a full super of honey in a couple of weeks when the extraction will begin…

Then, I guess I will put the super on that has had the honey removed, but the comb still in place. Maybe get some fall honey also…

Thanks…BCB

 

I think you will be happy with the super under the full one. Nice paint job btw.

 

So far so good--we think...

Although I did post a pic on this forum this morning. Title: "Problems Or"...

The artwork--The wife has always been good at such projects. We want another hive eventually and we she want to do it in a different "decor"!!!...

Thanks...BCB

 

I am only a third year and I have done it both ways. That is pulling a whole super and sometimes just frames at a time. You could take those 2 uncapped frames and place them in the new super you are adding. another thing I have done that hasn't been mentioned is I will sometimes shake out the frames of a whole super and put them away from the hives like Nancy suggested. Inevitably there are still bees on the frames so I bring the super up to my house and place it on a triangle bee Escape board. By the next day they have flown back home. I have found this easier than trying to brush or blow them off. Less stressful for me and for them. J

 

A couple of good ideas...

I ponder all the advice...

Thanks...BCB