I am a new flow hive beekeeper of one hive - my mentor put the old style super above my brood box with the flow hive super on top and now the bees are preferring the former to the flow hive super.
I want to remove the old style super but am not sure if I can just take it away if there is minimal honey in the flow hive super.
I would like advice please.
ps my son in law harvested from the old style supers - it was so difficult he did not return the frames - I will have to do that as the bees will draw the comb to fill the huge gap - I really just want to take this old style super box out.
Are you in Australia?
Did I understand correctly, someone took your super frames out to extract and you have no frames in there now?
You just take that super off, shake the bees into the broodbox, put your queen excluder under the flow box.
Put the old super sideways near the hive entrance, so the remaining bees can walk back in.
Sounds like an odd story that someone leaves your hive with missing frames. The bees are going to build a mess.
But if you jump in bravely now, you will end up with what you want. A flow hive.
Thankyou very much for your reply…yes, I am in the SW of WA and yes, my son in law harvested some honey from the old frames because there wasn’t any in the flow hive - it was so difficult he didn’t put them back - he didn’t know that the bees will draw comb in the space and make a mess…
So…are you saying, remove the old super box with the remaining frames, shake off the bees, make sure the queen excluder is above the brood box and put the flow hive (which has minimal stored honey) on top…
eg the remaining bees on the old super frames (lots of honey in these) will leave these frames that I put sideways near the hive entrance as you say, and go back to the hive.
** will the bees have enough stored honey?? THANKYOU.
The thing coming into my mind is whether or not there will be enough nectar coming into the hive at this stage of the season for the bees to put much into the Flow frames. You might end up with a large Flow super with not much in it coming into winter. It will depend on your area and on the strength of your colony I suppose. Hopefully a local will offer advice on the forum.
The urban flow in my area is over and I will take an ideal super off tomorrow to collect the last of the honey for the year -on just one hive. I will leave each hive a near full ideal super for autumn and winter (which will be above the brood with no excluder). It has been outrageously dry here however, so it may be different there.
Thankyou very much for your replies - many things to think about - and I
need to put the frames back into the old super for now and reassess later.
You have all been very helpful - thankyou very much again.
Kind Regards
Beverley
Depends were in the SW you are as the gums are starting to blossom. If you are on FaceBook you could join the Beekeepers of South West Western Australia as ask questions about flows for your geographic area.
thankyou - I have sent a request to join beekeepers sw wa -
great…and yes, the hive is in Northcliffe atm - I am moving it to
manjimup.
thankyou again for all of your help.
kind regards
beverley