Getting the bees out of the supers

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It is two visits

You do not lift supers full of bees. You put a clearer board under the supers on one visit, and take the supers off on the next. The bees walk down through a one-way door overnight and cannot get back up.

Leave it about 24 hours. Overnight to the next evening is ideal. Much longer and two things go wrong. The escapes clog up or get worked out. And a super with no bees in it but honey still in the comb is a target for robbing if there is any gap in the hive.

Which clearer board

A clearer board is just a crown board with one-way exits in it. There are two common kinds and they are not equally good.

• Porter bee escapes are the little plastic or metal boxes with two springy arms. They are cheap and they are what most boards come with. They also jam. Propolis stiffens the arms, drones get stuck in them because they are too wide to pass, and one blocked escape on a two-escape board halves your clearing rate. If you use them, take them apart and clean them before the season, and set the gap so a worker just squeezes through.
• Rhombus or eight-way escapes are a maze rather than a spring. Nothing to jam, they clear a stack faster, and they handle drones. They cost more once and then stop being a problem. If you are buying, buy these.

Whichever you use, the board only works if the bees have no other way back up. Check for gaps between boxes, and make sure the super above is not sitting on a cracked board or a warped rim.

Put it in the right place

The clearer goes under all the supers you want to take and above everything you are leaving. So on a hive with three supers where you want the top two, the board goes between the first and second super, not on top of the queen excluder.

Before you fit it, have a quick look for brood in the supers. If a queen has been up there at some point the bees will not abandon that comb, and you will come back to a super still full of bees sat over brood. Leave that box on, or deal with the brood first.

Take the queen excluder out at the same time if the supers are all coming off. It gives you one less thing to lift, and it stops the winter cluster leaving the queen behind.

The other way: shake and brush

If you only have one or two supers, or you did not plan ahead, you can do it by hand. Take the frames out one at a time, shake the bees off in front of the hive and brush off the rest. It works, and it makes everyone cross, including you.

Have a spare box with a cover ready, put each cleared frame straight into it, and keep it shut. An open box of honey next to an open hive in August is how a robbing frenzy starts.

Do not use a chemical clearer product in a hurry without reading the label. Some are not for use with honey you intend to sell.

Weight, honestly

A full National super holds at least 12 kg of honey, and the box and frames are on top of that. 2 A Langstroth super is bigger again. That is a real load at arm’s length, over a hive, on uneven ground, in a suit, in August.

Bring a barrow or a crate and a helper, or take half the frames out into a spare box and carry two light loads. Nobody has ever regretted making two trips.

National, Langstroth and WBC

The method is the same on all of them. What changes is the handling. Hive types used in the UK covers what fits what.

• National is the standard case above. Shallow supers, eleven frames, side lugs to grip.
• Langstroth comes in more than one depth. A British shallow super is about the same as a National shallow, but American pattern mediums and deeps are a good deal bigger, so check what you actually have before you lift it. The boxes have hand holds to grip, and the frames have short lugs, so you cannot get a hive tool under a frame as easily. Be more inclined to split the box.
• WBC means taking the outer lifts off first and stacking them somewhere they will not blow over. The inner boxes take the same British Standard frames as a National, so the job is the same from there, but they are not National boxes and they hold ten frames rather than eleven.

Flow hives are different, in one important way

On a Flow hive the honey comes out before the box does. Drain the frames with the taps, in place, and leave the super on for a day afterwards so the bees can clean up what is left in the cells. Then take the super and the queen excluder off. 3

This matters because a Flow super put straight into a shed with honey still in the channels is the thing that goes mouldy and attracts wax moth. The bees will do that cleaning far better than you can.

There is one more Flow mistake worth avoiding. Do not drain the frames and walk away. Give the frames long enough to finish running, and open the cells fully before you assume they are empty.

Storing them is a job of its own, because Flow frames are washed rather than extracted. Cleaning, freezing and storing supers covers it.

When to do it

The main crop comes off at the end of the summer flow, usually late July into August. Winter preparation starts once the last crop is off, and the varroa treatment normally goes on early to mid-August. 1 That is the sequence: supers off, then treat, then feed.

If you are going to heather, or you have a late Himalayan balsam flow, everything moves later. 1 The rule is that the treatment goes on as soon as the last honey you intend to keep is off, not on a fixed date.

Do not leave the crop on “just a bit longer” to see if they add more. The mites do not wait, and the August treatment is the one that counts.

Not starting a robbing war

Robbing is a real problem in late summer. 1 A few habits stop most of it:

• Work in the late afternoon or evening, and keep every box covered.
• Never leave a super, a lid or a bucket of wet comb standing open in the apiary.
• Clean up drips straight away, including on the hive roof and your own boots.
• Reduce the entrance on anything small or weak before you start, not after the fighting. On our hives, that is usually a strip of sponge in the underfloor entrance.
• Take wet supers out of the apiary, not just to the other end of it.

Wasps at the hive goes into the entrance blocks and screens.

Then what

Get the honey off the comb the same day if you can, because warm honey runs and cold honey does not. Getting the honey out of the comb is the next job. After that you have a stack of wet supers, and what you do with them in the next fortnight decides whether you still own drawn comb next spring. That is the job in Cleaning, freezing and storing supers.

Supers that are barely touched are a different question, and there is a good use for them: an empty super is exactly what a feeder needs.