Yes. From what I understand the queen excluder needs to come off so the queen doesn’t die and I was going to leave all the honey in my super for them (which includes 3 flow frames in the hybrid super). So far haven’t read anything saying that the flow frames have to come off over winter… I was originally worried that the queen would lay brood in the flow frames but more reading has said that the queen doesn’t normally lay over winter and will usually avoid the flow frames anyway. So I guess I either take off the queen excluder and leave the set-up as is (but need to find the queen in spring) or I’ve been advised to take off the super completely and leave them in a single box. Just after another opinion. Please correct me if any of this sounds wrong - still learning!
Sounds like a good plan, thanks.
Hi Rachael, I’m trying to work out your climate there in St Andrews. The BOM has climate graphs for Coldstream and Bundoora (at Latrobe Uni) and I’m guessing that your climate is similar? It doesn’t look like it is all that cold to me. What do you think about how your climate compares to those places? Coldstream is warmer than where I am, and I wouldn’t trust that my queens would not have brood going in August for instance - which is still officially winter there.
Do you have local advice that the queen will not lay there over winter?
Irrespective of that, I would be concerned about how to define winter and whether or not your queen might get going laying before you think she will, and then you might get brood in your Flow frames.
That’s a very good point, maybe it’s only very cold winters where that happens (I’ll look into it) and I definitely don’t want them laying in the flow frames. Our averages are low of 3 and high of 13 throughout winter. So would your advice be to take off the super and just leave them in the brood box over winter? My other thought was to leave the super on but take out the flow frames and replace with 4 empties and 4 full capped frames, then remove queen excluder. This is my first winter with bees so I really just want to make sure that they have enough honey.
I am not sure, but I personally would not remove the queen excluder from under the Flow frames as I find bees to be somewhat untrustworthy.
Perhaps you could put the 4 fully capped standard frames more towards the middle of the super as I reckon that is where the bees will gather? Perhaps then you could extract the honey from the Flow frames for yourself and put in the 4 empties?
I have noticed that given the time of the year, the bees are really frenzied with any smell of honey, so you might need to be extra careful in that respect.
Ok, thanks for your info Dan.