Will I leave Super on or take it off?

Hello, as we have reasonable winters here in the Hunter and looking into all the advice of leaving the super on or off during winter, I had decided to leave the super on as it had a good amount of honey and the bees were still present in the super, and collecting pollen and nectar. I did have a look earlier today and found no bees in the super and there was a small hole in the propolos below the flow frames where a small larva of some kind was loitering.

As the bees are not in the super and it has a fair load of honey in it should I remove it or leave it on?

My advice is to remove the super.

You can harvest any honey and then leave the super in place (maybe above the inner cover as some have suggested) for a couple days for the bees to clean. Then remove it and store in a cool, dark, pest-free place, perhaps wrapped in burlap.

If you have the freezer space, freezing the frames or the whole super for a couple days will kill any latent pests before you put it away.

2 Likes