I’m a new beekeeper and I have a quickly growing hive. I need to either put a super on or another brood box. I would prefer to add another brood box to strengthen the hive and have order one, but it won’t be here for another week and they are running out of room fast. I was wondering if I could place my Flow frames into the super temporarily until the brood box arrives and is ready to install? Would that cause an issue to transfer them from the super into the new brood box? Another option I thought of was to temporarily place the super on until the brood box gets here to let them store honey in the super and prevent the hive from becoming honey bound, then removing it and replacing it with the new brood box once it arrives. Any opinions on which options would work best?
Not sure where in MS you are but I don’t think most beekeepers in the gulf states need double brood hives for overwintering. If your brood box is fully drawn and packed with bees on all frames, just put on your queen excluder and flow super (with flow frames) and go for it.
If you don’t need two brood boxes then stick to just one because inspections are a whole lot easier.
I concur with Alok - rub some spare burr comb on those Flow frames & slap that super on
Thank you all so much for the advise. When you say rub some burr comb…do you usually coat each frame in the super? Also I had someone suggest lifting the lid a bit to encourage the bees to enter the super if they are put off by the queen excluder. Anyone else done that?
There have been all sorts of suggestions that make sense in some way but I think the most common is to smear some wax on the frames or even coat them with melted wax the way plastic foundation is coated.
I did nothing to the frames or the super and my bees worked them gangbusters but we had a strong flow.
When the bees first went up into the super it did seem like they had a hard time walking on the plastic but they got over it. I think waxing the plastic makes it feel more natural to their feet as well as the smell being enticing.
I had a small chunk of rendered beeswax that I ran over the faces of the frames like a piece of cheese on a cheese grater. Most of it stuck to the edges and as @chau06 says, helped make the new area smell familiar.