What size honey supers are best - full, ideal or halves

[swingbyte]

Something I've noticed with a lot of US beekeepers is that you seem to use halves rather than fulls as honey supers.  I am just starting and was intending to go with the fulls as this means that all my equipment is one standard size and interchangable.  I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a pro's and con's for the sizes of honey supers.  And does it alter the amount of honey one can harvest per season?

Thanks.

Oh and as a side question - why does everyone seem to feed their bees?  In Australia it seems that this is not done.

[Finsky]

Oh and as a side question - why does everyone seem to feed their bees?  In Australia it seems that this is not done.

A good notice! If you look at Finnish traffic camera, sugar is everywhere    

http://www.tiehallinto.fi/alk/english/frames/kelikamerat-frame.html

If you take
* Province of Lapland,
* from lower list  Vt 4 Napapiiri (=Polar Circle) , this highway goes to  the base on Santa.  

This guy is Gardener Manager, not real Santa. They duty is to keep Polar Circle in condition





.

[Jack Parr]

Something I've noticed with a lot of US beekeepers is that you seem to use halves rather than fulls as honey supers.  I am just starting and was intending to go with the fulls as this means that all my equipment is one standard size and interchangable.  I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a pro's and con's for the sizes of honey supers.  And does it alter the amount of honey one can harvest per season?

Thanks.

Oh and as a side question - why does everyone seem to feed their bees?  In Australia it seems that this is not done.

Actually when starting with the bees you really don't know much even after reading all you can read.

Depending on your lifting power you quickly learn that a deep box slam full of everything is rather heavy at around 80 pounds ( 454 grams per pound ) and tend to make you think of less is more.

If you plan to interact with your  " bee  pets " there is a need to go down to the deep box and even down to the bottom board occasionaly. Lifting and unglueing those 80 lbs boxes is clumsy work.  I, personally, have decided that I will use one deep and one medium for a basic brood setup with 10 frames in both. I will use medium  supers for honey flows with nine frames spaced evenly using spacers.  However this is not set in stone because in the future there may be a need for combines and splits etc.                                    
                                                                                                          I was really impressed with how the " pets " filled the medium nine frame set- up this past honey season. They were textbook perfect making un-capping  a really simple task.  I did extract some deep frames also but they were filled unevenly, high and low areas in the comb making uncapping more difficult.

I am also thinking about trying TBH as a novelty.

There is in reality no fixed rules about how to do bee stuff and as you will find out everyone has ideas about what to do. It's all a matter of what YOU  want to do. The standard practices are time proven and serve most people well but there is always room for " what if " folks.

Good luck.

[Finsky]

To beginners I have said that use normal new hives. If beekeeping does not succeed, you may sell them off without big loses. Most of beginners stop after couple of years.  Sensitivity or fear for  stings are real reasons.

Langstroth and medium supers are good start.

[Jay]

Three mediums is equal to two deeps. As has already been stated, full deeps can weigh eighty to one hunderd pounds and that's a lot to lift!! If you  like the idea of uniformity, then use three mediums for your brood boxes, and then stack as many mediums on top for honey that they will fill. This way all you equipment will be uniform and can be interchanged anywhere! If you need a frame of honey to feed a weaker hive take it from over here and put it in over there. If you need to transfer a frame of emerging brood to another brood box, take it from your strongest hive. All equipment is the same so it is interchangable anywhere! :D

[Michael Bush]

>Something I've noticed with a lot of US beekeepers is that you seem to use halves rather than fulls as honey supers.

I'm not sure how those tranlate to our terminology.  But here a Deep is 9 5/8" boxes, a medium is 6 5/8" boxes and a shallow is 5 3/4".

> I am just starting and was intending to go with the fulls as this means that all my equipment is one standard size and interchangable.

All one size and interchangable is a good thing.

> I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a pro's and con's for the sizes of honey supers. And does it alter the amount of honey one can harvest per season?

The bees don't care what size the boxes are and it iwll not effect the harvest at all.

The only issues I see are the one you already mentioned, which is interchangability and the one someone else mentioned, which is lifting.

In my experience a deep full of honey weighs 90 pounds.  A medium full of honey weighs 60 pounds.  What I use are eight frame mediums and they weight 48 pounds.

I run all eight frame mediums now (except for a few experiments and a few boxes I haven't got converted).  I cut all my deeps down to mediums and all my 10 frame boxes down to 8 frame boxes.

[newbee101]

I like the deeps for brood and shallows for honey. I dont like the idea of mixing up the combs. My shallow supers are used for honey only.

[gottabee]

As a new beekeeper I started with 10 frame deeps. They were heavy. I have changed out all my equipment to 8 frame gear. I like it much better. I use 2 Deeps for brood and medium supers. It is much easier to work since I changed over.

[downunder]

Something I've noticed with a lot of US beekeepers is that you seem to use halves rather than fulls as honey supers.  I am just starting and was intending to go with the fulls as this means that all my equipment is one standard size and interchangable.  I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a pro's and con's for the sizes of honey supers.  And does it alter the amount of honey one can harvest per season?

Thanks.

Oh and as a side question - why does everyone seem to feed their bees?  In Australia it seems that this is not done.

A half box of honey on top of a full depth is good for wintering hives in AUS (depending on state). Other than that they are mainly used for section comb production.

Bees are fed regularly by commercial beekeepers in Australia. The policy and standards for members of the Queen Breeders Association is to always feed weekly sugar syrup in the mating nuc's. This ensures the bees are never lacking in energy food stores and guarantees a very good queen.

Pollen supplements are often fed to ensure good stocks of drones when required.

Feeding has become more difficult in some areas because of Small Hive Beetle. Sugar syrup in hot weather raises the humidity and produces favourable conditions for reproduction of SHB.

Beetles lay eggs in pollen patties and generally larva are present within 1 week.

[amymcg]

I started out with the standard setup, 2 deeps and shallows for honey.  The shallows are plenty heavy when they are full.  By September, my bees had filled their upper deep completely with honey. I nearly broke my back picking it up during the last inspection. Getting it off wasn't so bad, but putting it back on was pretty awful.   I'm pretty strong for a woman, having halued 50 pound feed sacks around since I was 6 or 7, but this thing is too heavy when loaded down.  I have to have help to get it off the hive when full.

If you want interchangability, I would go with all mediums.