Episode 406: Wet and Dry Supers

Now is the time, for me at least, to consolidate frames.

Remember, things could be very different for you in your local area, so please do bear that in mind before leaping in and doing what it is that I'm doing.

And what might that be? Well, like I said, frame consolidation.

That's super frames.

All too often, I get to the end of the summer having become overly excited to see nectar coming in, and I've added too many supers.

Note the plural there.

And of course, the bees sometimes struggle to fill them all, resulting in a mix of the amount of honey found in those frames.

These in different supers, some capped and looking ready to come off, while others are barely touched by the bees with just a few cells across a frame being used, and of course, everything in between.

And this could be across two or even three supers.

There's really no point in trying to extract small amounts from some of these frames, certainly for me, as it would just take up too much time, and there's the new issue of reduced space availability in my honey room.

The way I tackle this is to swap frames around so that one super gets filled as much as possible with capped or nearly capped honey.

This might also be frames with cells that are not capped, but when the shake test is performed, very little, if any, drips out.

If I find I've been a little too optimistic, no change there really, and I end up with a fully empty super containing just foundation or empty comb, I'd probably remove it.

I say probably because each apiary is different, and there may still be a chance that some colonies are finding a source of nectar.

Although for me, it is very late in the summer nectar flow for that now.

What I'm trying to achieve here is a consolidation of super frames to be able to remove any that are totally empty and not going to be used at all, and filling up supers in preparation for removal to extract, making that extraction process as productive as possible.

I'm looking to remove more honey soon.

I need to keep it coming back to base regularly because I no longer have the luxury of that warm room where I could stack so many supers at once.

So it makes sense to bring a stack or two back home to the honey room and extract a little and often, maybe 20 supers or so at a time.

Once these supers have been extracted, they need moving out of the honey room as soon as I can shift them, ready for the next batch to come back home.

So what do I do with them? And if they're not going to be used anymore this year, where do they go? It's a question that I was asked just this week by one of our Patreon subscribers, Steve, and I really appreciate the question, Steve.

Thanks for getting in touch.

The question was fundamentally surrounding the way I tackle post-extraction supers and the methods I use for storing them, either wet or dry.

So let's tackle this right from the basics, and I'll explain what I choose to do and why.