Bees refilling super

[msansome]

Hello all,

I did my first ever harvest a couple of weeks ago. It was only one super but I got around 8.5kg of honey and I'm feeling quite pleased with myself - but that's not the reason for the post.

I gave the bees back the capping and the wet frames in the super. The following week I inspected. They had completely dealt with the cappings, and they had pretty much cleaned up the wet comb. There was however what looked like a little honey in the bottom of some of the comb, which I assumed they had not quite managed to clean out - so I left it for another week for them to finish the job. I inspected again today (Sun 16 Sept) and found that the little b*%%£rs had more or less refilled around 3 frames with honey (though nowhere near being capped).

What should I do? Should I leave them to carry on filling the super? I was planning on taking off the super, and thinking about feeding them - but with the current good weather (I am in Kingston upon Thames) the queen is still actively laying (even drone) and the hive is quite full.

I am using 14 x 12s and in the brood box they currently have around 5 frames of stores (although these are made up of just the top half of several frames). There is one face of one frame on which they have not so far drawn out the comb and I was hoping that they would fill the stores in the brood box rather than the super.

As winter approaches I am concerned that I should not leave on the (largely empty) super, but I don't want to deprive the bees of their recent honey. If however they continue to make stores in the brood box I think that they could have enough for the winter.

How can I persuade them to put stores in the brood box not in the super?
If I remove the partially filled super, is it safe to store it until next year (if so how best to do so)?

All advice gratefully accepted.

Best regards
Mark

[Nigel Pringle]

Remove queen excluder. Stick super underneath brood box. Job done.
They will relocate the honey in the super to the brood box upstairs.
If the super was full of honey you should leave it where it was ( or more properly remove and extract for personal use)...but still remove the queen excluder

[Patrick]

As Nigel suggests.

Well on getting a crop in your first year. Only thing to add is that the bees may still be using up stores and raising young as well as building up stores. The flow of additional nectar could stop at anytime.

I would be cautious about assuming that the mix of part filled frames is enough to get them through the winter unassisted. You are not short of space in a 14 x 12 so I would still bung in some syrup before long. Better safe than sorry maybe?

[nealh]

A 14 x 12 drawn frame is approx. 7lbs when full of stores. You should be able to approx. estimate any stores on combs to accumatively give you an idea of stores within.
Soon ivy will be available and my hives can gain 15lbs of stores on top of that whIch they already have after any feeding needs.
A good sign of when they are on the ivy is a strong aroma around/from the hives and cream coloured pollen baskets on returning foragers.

[DianeBees]

If you have Himalayan balsam in your area they may be bringing in plenty of nectar.
Do you have bees coming back with a white mark on their backs? That's a sign they're on balsam.

The Himalayan balsam is a pink flowered plant that likes the edges of rivers, streams and canals. It provides an end of year nectar source until the first frost. The white mark is pollen the plant puts on their backs to aid pollination as the bees go plant to plant.

[AdamD]

I too would put the super underneath. There is a good chance that it will be emptied in a week or so. (But remember that bees don't always do as you tell them!). To improve the chances, you could make an eke (spacer) and fit it between lower super and brood box above. Make a hole in the eke to act as an entrance and seal up the usual hive entrance. With food below the nest the bees will surely move it up. This is one I did a few years ago when I had the wrong colour paint!

[thewoodgatherer]

Remove queen excluder. Stick super underneath brood box. Job done.
They will relocate the honey in the super to the brood box upstairs.
If the super was full of honey you should leave it where it was ( or more properly remove and extract for personal use)...but still remove the queen excluder

Yeah I had the same problem as above, would you suggest leaving it under until spring or just until bees have cleared it?

[msansome]

Remove queen excluder. Stick super underneath brood box. Job done.
They will relocate the honey in the super to the brood box upstairs.
If the super was full of honey you should leave it where it was ( or more properly remove and extract for personal use)...but still remove the queen excluder

This is a brilliantly helpful reply. Thank you.
I am definitely going to do this (possibly tonight if I can).
I would however just like some clarification on the question on the queen excluder. If I don’t put an excluder between the super (now underneath) and the brood box, is there not a risk that the queen will start laying in the lovely freshly-drawn newly-cleaned comb in the super?

Thanks for the help so far. Much appreciated.

Mark

[msansome]

As Nigel suggests.

Well on getting a crop in your first year. Only thing to add is that the bees may still be using up stores and raising young as well as building up stores. The flow of additional nectar could stop at anytime.

I would be cautious about assuming that the mix of part filled frames is enough to get them through the winter unassisted. You are not short of space in a 14 x 12 so I would still bung in some syrup before long. Better safe than sorry maybe?

Thanks for this. I just wanted to say that I fully intend to feed them. I was planning to start this last weekend until I found that they seem to be filling the super rather than feeding from it - so I figured that I would wait for another week or so...

Thanks again.

Mark

[Patrick]

Cheers Mark,

Sounds perfectly reasonable, some folk get prodigious late flows off ivy but not much comes in around here unfortunately .

Oddly I have some bees very near the river and one generally doesn't need any extra winter feed as they gather more than enough from Himalayan balsam after extraction. Not this year tho, not sure why but there seems a lot less balsam about - wonder if there is a bit of a balsam pulling initiative locally?

Have fed them for the first time in years, yet another example of sometimes you need to respond to what is in front of you not what you think should be going on.