Question about supering

[Kris^]

A question that I should know the answer to but don't . . .  

Two weeks ago I put a medium super with drawn comb on each of my two hives from splits.  They've been filling up the comb with nectar pretty good (about a third full as of last Sunday), and are to the point now where they are so full in the supers that they are spilling out of the oval hole in the inner cover.  Which tells me I should be adding another super.  I only have frames of foundation to add on top of the hives though, so here's my question: do I put the next supers with foundation on top of the supers currently being filled up, or above the brood chamber but below the drawn super?  I want to be able to pull the filled supers off in a week or two (or three) to extract them without too much hassle, and replace them empty.

-- Kris

[Jerrymac]

I would put them below the full supers as I have the entrance at the bottom of the hive. This would mean they wouldn't have as far to travel to start filling the next empty frames and cuts down on traffic in the fuller  box. Also bees fill from the top down. So it just makes since to me.

[mark]

put them under the ones they are working and give them a top entrance too

[Kris^]

I was thinking about doing an upper entrance.  Would that go all the way at the top, or between supers, or above the brood boxes?

By the way, how are your hives doing down there to the south?

-- Kris

[mark]

i would put it top of all supers but i don't think it matters as long as it keeps them from crowding the broodnest trying to unload.
  i'm happy with progress even with a few glitches.  wanted to swarm so i split in two and a nuc.  thought queen cells got damaged so i ordered one from georgia.  in transit for 6 days!! over the holiday weekend.    combined the two hives with queen cells to concentrate on necter.  nuc finally got a queen raised and mated  sooo... now i had an extra queen and a strong hive (good progress on two small supers)and nuc.  pulled 2 frames for the queen in another nuc box,  checked frames really good for the queen and boxed them up with the new queen cage....you know where this is going right?  checked 2 days later and released the queen whereupon they commenced to try and kill her.  she dropped between the frames so i pulled them out to rescue her, after all she is a purchased one.  there big as life is the other queen on the one frame..... don't know HOW i didn't see her.
  the rescued queen seems to be ok.   i have her back in the cage in my observation hive in my basement.

[thegolfpsycho]

Another part of bottom supering is 1, the honey that ripens first comes off the top, and 2. It triggers their hoarding instinct.  Sometimes, bees will decide they have enough and get very melancholy.  By giving the room between stores and brood... it fires em up again.

[Michael Bush]

I'll give you another option.  Put an empty super on top of the brood nest and put in a drawn capped comb and an empty every other space.  Actually you don't even need the foundation when you do this, but you can put in foundation if you like.  It's now "checkerboarded".  The drawn comb draws the bees into the area to work and the empy comb gives them something to do there.

[Kris^]

ichecked frames really good for the queen and boxed them up with the new queen cage....you know where this is going right?  checked 2 days later and released the queen whereupon they commenced to try and kill her.  

LOL!  Sounds like a stunt I'd pull.  (Wait a minute -- I did!)

So what I ended up doing was putting supers on hive 3 & 4 (from packages this year) with an entrance for each at the top of the brood chamber; a second super on hive 1 (the cutdown split) with an entrance between the supers; and an entrance in hive 2 (the walkaway split) between the brood chamber and the existing super.  Hive 2 is giving me grief this year, with lots of burr comb throughout, and the queen laying in the super.  I moved her down, shuffled some empty brood comb into the lower box, and maybe she'll stay there while the brood above hatches and the colony starts refilling the super with honey.  This is the same queen that laid in the super last year.  The new queen in the cutdown is doing real good, keeping herself in the brood chamber with probably 8 or 9 frames full of capped brood, and much of the rest ucapped brood and honey/pollen.  That hive will be exploding in a week or two!

And I opened some drone brood in each hive and found no evidence of varroa anywhere.  

-- Kris