BBKA Forum

Moved post from JoJo36:-

I have a question re Apivar strips and honey supers please:

When you have extracted any honey from your supers is it best to treat with Apivar strips first and take off supers even with hugely populated colony for 6 weeks (not sure where all the bees will go) and then take out strips and feed and fill a super for winter around mid September??!!
OR
I've read that some beekeepers say a brood box that has been fed whilst apivar strips on will suffice for the whole of winter??!! I've always fed whilst strips in but mark the frames, problem with this is that these frames may not all be emptied over winter and you are stuck with keeping them for the next time??!!

I have moved this question from 'What have you done..' to this new thread - hope you don't mind JoJo36
Adam.

Just leave the supers on after extracting. It's the honey you don't want contaminating.
Adding strips or vaping plus winter feeding are my last jobs of the year. Done around Late September/October in my neck of the woods.
One tip is to remove strips 1/2 way through treatment, scrape them and put them back in a slightly different position.

Thanks Nigel

My worry/concern was that the supers may have honey residue after extraction and the bees may start filling them up again then I don't know next year if part of the honey I'm taking off may have remnants of the apivar strips especially if I then feed 2-1 syrup to fill up super for winter whilst strips left in?
Thanks for tip re scraping strips, good idea to get most out of treatment!

If you feed them then they will start filling them up. If you then place super underneath the brood box for the winter (no queen excluder) it should be totally empty come spring. If not just put any frames with capped sugar syrup contaminated with Apivar to one side.

Thanks Nigel, I think I'll do that this year as last time I had many frames left in the spring!