Regular super as overflow?

Flow Hive
1

I was just in a discussion with an old-school beekeeper that said a Flow Frames super might get overwhelmed during high flow season. He can just add another super, while adding an extra Flow Super would be costly.

He’s not wrong with them being expensive, but I told him that we can just empty individual frames as soon as most of the cells are capped and control it that way.

But I had another thought. Beekeepers here have the bees clean their own frames after harvest. They use an empty box between brood and to-be-cleaned frames. The workers will notice some honey being too far away and move it down.

Now I wonder if I can use a regular super as “overflow” on top of a Flow super. Would the bees move honey down from it once we harvested the Flow frames (and it being “empty” space now)?

2

They might. Bees, being bees, do what they want, not what you want! :rofl:

I have used a regular super on top of the Flow frames to help with encouraging capping on humid days during a high nectar flow. You can certainly use it as an overflow too, but I wouldn’t put it on until your Flow super is almost full. You don’t want wax moths and SHB living up there and distracting the house bees from defending more important resources! :wink:

2 Likes
3

Wax moths don’t really care about clean honey frames, they prefer the protein shells in the brood boxes, I think.

And we don’t have those beetles here in Europe - only Varroa.

Either way, as an emergency measure this should be a feasible option, if they do what I want or not. :wink: