Hi Guys,
I wonder if I could trouble you for some more help?!
So post split the population of bees looks very strong still.
So I currently have 2 brood boxes and the flow super.
I would like to change to 1 brood box, then a normal super, then the flow super. I can then add more boxes on top of that where required.
However, my query is whether to add another box on right now as from what I can see I’m the flow super there are quite a lot of bees. The flow super has had some work on it but there is no honey in it yet. So I am reluctant to add another super yet as there is no honey in the flow super yet. But I also don’t want to deprive them of space if they need it and if they want to fill normal frame with honey rather than the flow frames then fair enough.
I am still in the “leave for 4 weeks stage” after making a split last week so have not look through the brood boxes to see what the population is like but I do believe it is strong.
All I know is that there is very good regular traffic through the entrance and good population in the flow super (looking through the windows). They’re not packed on every flow frame, maybe 3 or 4 of the 6 looks quite tight.
I suppose my question is should I add another super now to give more space, is it too early as they have not stored any honey in them yet? Or should I leave them to fill the flow super before I do so?
Thanks
You wouldn’t put another super on a hive with the flow hive super, you would just harvest the honey when its full or nearly full and then they will refill (weather/climate/season dependent). I’m not sure why you were planning on multiple supers with the flow hive?
2 Likes
Hi Tim,
That was my initial thought of process with the flow hive super. However, I was thinking about it from a space point of view.
Perhaps the idea is to keep splitting a hive with a flow super on it to create more space when necessary.
I’m interested in all thoughts on this as coming up with a good strategy for the flow hive super would be ideal.
Thanks
Hi Anish, I’m not sure I’m understanding your statement correctly. What space are you concerned about, space in the brood chamber where you want another box to give the queen more room to lay eggs and raise brood to boost your colony strength? That is reasonable and lots of people do that— I have several hives that are 2 brood boxes and 1 honey super (flow) and that works fine. I do split my strong hives in spring to increase my apiary but I’m now up to 10 hives and I only started out thinking I would have 2. So I don’t really want to keep splitting at this point to create more hives— and have started to consider splitting to prevent swarm activity and giving those splits to other people near me that are needing a queen / help them with colony loss over the winter sort of thing.
How many colonies are you keeping?