When should I add the super

Sounds like you have the flow hive hybrid. The bottom box is for the brood, the top box is an 8 frame super that holds 3 flow frames and 4 standard deep frames. I believe the intention is for the 4 standard frames to be reserve honey for the brood box and the 3 flow frames are yours to harvest. This way when you harvest you don’t take all their reserves since there isn’t an upper and lower brood box. This is what makes it hybrid and protects you from taking all the bee’s food upon harvesting.

I think another explanation is you can use the standard frame honey as cut comb. Alternatively you can spin it out or crush & strain it. If you spin the honey out, you can reuse the comb to save fitting new foundation.

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Moving on to the next step and researching growth management. I have my deep brood box filled so I added my medium they filled it with honey so I removed a frame from the med and a frame from the deep and added new ones. They were both end frames and the brood frame had some honey and drone brood. So I then added my flow super. Bees are in it. :slight_smile: :slight_smile: . Now a couple areas : Never had to inspect this situation. I am in Hawaii and we do have a period where nectar dries up also where I am at. (Always have coconut but the orchard is mostly in fruit now.) So do I remove the flow super put it on a surface with the excluder under it, look at the med which should be filled with honey, then place it on a surface and then inspect the brood box? So much to move worried about hurting or loosing Queen. Any advise on how to handle inspection and should I add a med empty above to grow more brood? I want to grow bees more than honey. Any advise is appreciated.

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Many people in tropical and warm subtropical areas leave the Flow super on all of the time. I would suggest that if there are enough bees to cover the frames, and they aren’t gumming up the Flow super with brown, sticky propolis, you can leave it on.

If the bee population drops, or they start making your life hard with propolis take it off. Simple to say, harder to judge. You will make a good choice, I am certain. :wink:

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I have a lot to learn regarding honey. I was thinking it stayed on and they filled when they did their thing and I would remove some Never thought about the gumming it up. Thanks.

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In cooler climates, bees (especially Italian strains) start gathering large amounts of propolis. I have never been to Hawaii, so I don’t know how much you might be vulnerable to this. However, everywhere I have lived (multiple different climates), it is an issue when cooler seasons approach. Just trying to help you make good decisions for yourself. :wink:

yes I did see one Hawaii person I will search to see if there is any tropical discussion.

I did want to digress from the topic of the yucky flow frame thread…

When do you generally place your super in the spring in PA?

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Gotcha :wink: yes, last season I was managing swarming from March thru April, but by May I had two strong colonies ready for supering. The Flow supers went on those in mid-May and I harvested at the end of June/first week of July. There was a stall in spite of good nectar flow available due to moisture content not able to reduce to proper capping readiness in the Flow frames. Sometime in June I put mediums with some drawn but empty comb on top of the Flows, which as @Dawn_SD had described did the trick of increasing airflow. The Flow frames AND the medium supers on both those hives filled quickly after that.

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@epeleg
@JamieB
@Kevinw1028

Returning to answer Alok just now in this thread made me wonder how y’all have fared as newbeeks and how are your bees these days?

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Do you run double deep brood boxes?

I’ll answer by saying I run ‘multiple boxes’ - two consist of a deep and a medium, one is two deeps and a medium, and the fourth one is three mediums :laughing:. Just happened to work out that way due to differing colony sizes.

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