I’ve been receiving a lot of mail from beekeepers wanting to know how to get their bees to start building comb in a new super. I’ve shared ideas that I’ve heard about or tried myself. Now I’m going to tell you want I really think.
I think your bees haven’t moved into the new super because they are not ready. When they are ready—if ever—then they will work on it. In the meantime, they have their own agenda.
Honey bees are genetically programmed to store more honey than they need. It is one of the characteristics that make them so alluring and so useful to humans. We can harvest their surplus honey and the bees will (usually) still have enough food to get them through the winter.
If your kitchen and dining room are on the first floor, you probably do not store food on the second or third floor. You want it easy to reach and quick to retrieve. Bees are no different. Why would they store food three floors up if they still have room around the brood nest?
This, I believe, is exactly what’s going on. Until all the convenient nooks and crannies are full, they continue to store honey just outside the brood nest. At this time of year the brood nest is shrinking, giving them more and more room all the time.
Although you can sometimes cajole bees into building comb in the supers by baiting them, this really doesn’t help you in the long run. You can end up with a sort of chimney effect where the bees are building up and not out. So, for example, frames 1 and 10—or even 1, 2, 9 and 10—in the brood nest may not be totally filled because the bees were baited into the honey supers.
Later, you harvest your honey—really cool, you think, you got surplus honey. But then, long about January or February, you discover that the bees don’t have enough food to make it till spring. Instead of you tricking them, they tricked you: they stored honey in the supers but didn’t finish the job they should have done first. You end up feeding and feeding and feeding. No fun at all.
So be patient. When the brood boxes are full the bees will start building in the supers. If the whole summer goes by and they never put anything in the supers, it’s because there wasn’t enough surplus nectar. The amount of honey they store has everything to do with how much nectar is available, and very little to do with how you arrange the honey supers.
Rusty
If there are already one or more supers on the brood chamber, I always put new supers between the existing supers and the brood chamber. A sort of new super sandwich.
That way, the bees draw the comb and fill the box more quickly.
Some say that the bees are more likely to swarm – but I have not found this to be the case.
I concur, when the bees are ready they will fill them. This being my first year I didn’t expect to see any honey but to my surprise they managed to draw and fill a medium super in about 2 weeks. I had to quickly add another to hopefully reap the harvest!
Steve
Rusty,
I agree, you are better to let them move at their pace rather than push them along. I have a hive started late from a nuc (end of May) that still has comb to draw in the 2nd brood chamber. In Illinois we are starting to go into our dearth time (till the end of August) and I am more concerned with them building up for themselves rather than taking honey from them. Interestingly in the same yard, I have 2 packages that started about 2 weeks earlier and they have done well and actually have 2 supers on them and continue to bring in honey and pollen.
I’ve given up on trying to encourage the bees in my backyard to build in the honey supers. I’m not attempting any manipulation of the hives for the rest of the season. (I’m learning.)
My first-year foundationless hives loaded up with honey-hungry drones just aren’t ready to go into the honey supers yet. (That’s my story, anyway, and I’m sticking to it.) I did a partial inspection today and noticed they’re back-filling some of the old drone comb in the brood boxes, but still no interest in the honey supers. I suppose they’ll move into honey supers once they’re done back-filling the old drone comb. We’ll see.
Although I’m not getting much honey from them, they do look like active and healthy hives. I’m happy about that.
Hi Rusty
I have some old left over brown comb that was once ant infested. I sat it out in the sun and now it’s been cleaned out and looks good to use. Is this a no-no?
Vickie,
Used brown comb is no problem if you know the source. If you are sure it came from a disease-free hive it will be fine. Bees prefer used comb to new comb so having it on hand is especially good for starting up swarms or new packages. Ants, earwigs, spiders or mold are generally not a problem.
I did a hive inspection this weekend on my two newest hives that were small swarms captured in June. A new queen was introduced into one hive. I was disappointed that they haven’t grown very much. The bees seem to be more interested in staying on the comb that was transferred from the swarm trap instead of building comb on the frames w/ foundation. Should I be concerned?
Vickie,
That’s strange. A June swarm, even if small, should be fairly big by now. I have a medium-size June swarm filling a triple deep. Do you see eggs, brood, pollen, or honey? If no eggs or brood, do you see the queens? Are you in a nectar dearth? I can’t remember if you fed these swarms are not. How many combs do the bees cover in each hive? They need an active nectar flow (or sugar syrup) to build combs. At this time of year, comb building usually slows way down, but if they didn’t build any in June or July, it leaves you in a bind. If the hives are really small, you may have to combine to get them through the winter.
I reinspected the smaller hive and found the queen, honey, brood, not a lot of pollen and couldn’t see any eggs, but there was brood, so I’m assuming she is laying.
I noticed the majority of bees are on the two centered frames. They have almost filled in comb on those two frames only.
I also noticed that there are bees walking all over the other foundation(s), but no comb activity. There is a small comb, the size of your fist, but flat, that they built on the wall of the hive when they were first captured but that hasn’t increased in size at all.
I fed them when first captured then stopped after they seemed to be doing fine.