Now I’m a pretty big guy but how do you lift the super off?
I have a full depth Langstroth 10frame. 7 flow frames.
I’m not even going to guess the weight.
I’ve made a crane on the back of my Ute to lift both brood and super.
My flow hive frames are well glued together and getting them apart will be a challenge
Do you drain the honey first?
I’m really wanting to inspect the brood before winter, but want to leave them their honey for the winter.
Getting a hold of the flow frames is also a delicate operation. The only real way is a combination of hive tools and pulling the wire.
Here are my thoughts. I would take them out one by one. The j tool will lift them out under one end but you need to prise them up at the other end too. Flow team show the process in one of their videos. As they are heavily propolised and if very tightly spaced, they can be difficult for sure. I have added a loop of picture frame wire under the ends of a couple of my frames to help lift them. Trying to lift the whole super if it is nearly full might do your back in or you might not get a good grip on it and drop it (like I did once).
Watch out for the brood box slipping off the base board too as you move things.
I found my bees had glued super to queen excluder to frames above and below nice and solid, but had not done the same between the broodbox and the base. When the broodbox slipped off the base, it closed the entrance and that really did not make them happy.
I’ve screwed my base boards onto the underside of the brood box.
The base was a bit warped to start with and didn’t like that. Screwing them on fixed that.