In my location I've adopted a way of supering that has been working very well.
Here is a photo of how it worked the first year I tried it, 2008 -
Bearding due to not enough supers.
Here is how it is configured, from bottom, up (
SketchUp drawing of configuration):
--Bottom board, but not entrances, they are SBB, but closed, then there is a slatted rack for the bees to cluster on, which is built-in so it is actually a SBB/SR. Here is the link to my SketchUp drawing of one -
SBB/SR.
--Two 8-frame medium depth supers for brood chambers. Several times I tried giving them three brood supers, but they always just filled the third one with honey, so I stopped trying to get them to use three brood supers. They do use almost all of the space in the two brood supers to raise brood. I also provide a small opening in or above the top brood super for drones to exit.
--Plastic queen excluder to help keep the queen in the bottom supers as her "brood nest".
--Entrance rim; see (
SketchUp of simplified entrance rim). There are no entrances below this entrance (except the small opening to let drones out). This entrance rim provides easy access for returning field bees to either enter the brood nest by going through the queen excluder or up into the honey supers. Bottom entrances was where hoards of desert toads would depopulate my hives - it was a sad time.
--First honey super, sits on the entrance rim, which is immediately above the queen excluder.
--Additional honey supers are set so they are closed in the back, but slid back from the front to provide an entrance/ventilation slot along their entire front edge. These additional upper entrances can be removed whenever desired by simply using a bar clamp to pull the supers back into alignment with each other.
--Cover; I prefer using, what I call a flat cover with rim. Here is a SketchUp link to a description,
Flat Cover with Rim. I use these covers to give the bees room to cluster above the frames and so I can slide it back to create a top entrance. At the end of the season, the entrance rims can be removed and the cover, when slid back 1/4", can be the Winter entrance. The bees usually propolize it, so it stays put, but a weight can be used to help hold it in place.
--The photo linked at the beginning of this post shows a hive with this configuration that could have filled many more supers, if I'd had them available.
Each year I have acquired and assembled many additional supers and frames in an attempt to catch more of our Mesquite honey flow, but each year I've wound up using the additional supers to establish more hives rather than providing the hives I have with more room to store honey. Oh well, maybe someday . . .