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Author Topic: Spring Supper Question????????  (Read 1596 times)

Offline Cossack

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Spring Supper Question????????
« on: December 24, 2010, 09:35:17 am »
Merry Christmas All!

     I have a question about Suppers and the Spring. I have left a few suppers on my bee hives to give them a fighting chance from this cold Winter. I know the Hive with the Queen will move up into the suppers as they consume the honey. I had removed the Queen excluders in the late Fall.

     In the Spring the Queen will start laying eggs in the Suppers. How do I get the Queen and Hive to move back into the Brood Boxes and clean the Suppers for the Spring nectar Flow?

I had a dream last night, I was eating a 10 pound marshmallow. I woke up this morning and the pillow was gone.....

Offline BjornBee

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Re: Spring Supper Question????????
« Reply #1 on: December 24, 2010, 09:56:21 am »
They will naturally start backfilling from the top box and force the queen back down into the lower boxes. You don't need to do anything.

You could always manually place the queen back down below any box you want (with queen excluder), but make sure you do this after any chance of cold night temps have passed.

I'd just wait till they back fill the first top box, probably at the beginning of the flow, then slap a few extra supers on top.
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Offline Finski

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Re: Spring Supper Question????????
« Reply #2 on: December 24, 2010, 10:08:09 am »
I have left a few suppers on my bee hives to give them a fighting chance from this cold Winter.


That does not help against cold winter. You have too much space where the heat of cluster escapes.

You may use your "supers" as brood box that bees clean off the crystallized honey.
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Offline AllenF

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Re: Spring Supper Question????????
« Reply #3 on: December 24, 2010, 06:16:10 pm »
If your brood and super boxes are all the same size, meds or deeps, then you just pull the super withthe queen laying in it in the spring and move it to the bottom.

Offline Brian D. Bray

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Re: Spring Supper Question????????
« Reply #4 on: December 24, 2010, 06:50:13 pm »
I don't see the problem.
If the super has never been used as a brood chamber then the chances are good the queen will not begin laying their until after the boxes used as brood chambers have been filled with both brood and honey.  Bees will begin the spring by replenishing the arch of honey on the brood frames then backfill into the brood area until enough brood has been laid then the backfilled honey is consumed being dedicated to brood production.  Once the Arches of honey on the brood frames are filled and the brood frames are filled with brood, then the bees will move to adjacent areas to store more honey.  If the hive has a prolific queen the queen may then move with the stores, but to that I must ask why worry about it, it is much better to have a queen that produces 3 boxes of brood than one that produces 2 boxes of brood from a honey production standpoint.  The more bees the more honey if there is sufficient harvest area.
A prolific queen of this type is the one a beekeeper should look to for his splits and queen rearing stock.
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Offline rdy-b

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Re: Spring Supper Question????????
« Reply #5 on: December 24, 2010, 10:59:53 pm »
Merry Christmas All!

     I have a question about Suppers and the Spring. I have left a few suppers on my bee hives to give them a fighting chance from this cold Winter. I know the Hive with the Queen will move up into the suppers as they consume the honey. I had removed the Queen excluders in the late Fall.

     In the Spring the Queen will start laying eggs in the Suppers. How do I get the Queen and Hive to move back into the Brood Boxes and clean the Suppers for the Spring nectar Flow?


TO answer your question--DRIVE them down with SMOKE -then slip the excluder back in-the brood will hatch and the hive will resume its course -RDY-B

 

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