A Beginner’s Practical Guide: What Is A Super In Beekeeping?
For most new beekeepers, the prospect of honey production in your backyard is one of the most exciting aspects. As beginner beekeepers, the terms and parts of a beehive can become quite confusing. However, as you build your apiary, understanding hive configuration is important in managing your bees. One component that is talked about frequently is a super or honey supers. What is a super in beekeeping?
What is a Super in Beekeeping?
A honey super is a hive box dedicated to the production of honey. In a Langstorth hive, a queen excluder separates the super from the brood boxes to prevent the queen from laying eggs in the frames dedicated to the honey collection. Queen excluders come in a variety of styles, in general, they are a screen that has holes that are large enough for the worker honeybees to pass through. However since a mature queen bee is larger than most worker bees, she is unable to pass through to the honey frames.
Sizes of Boxes in a Langstroth Hive
In a Langstroth hive, a hive box is not defined by its size but by its contents. As a new beekeeper, you can choose the size boxes that best meet your needs. There are three main sizes of boxes to choose from deep, medium, and shallow boxes. A 10-frame deep box is 9 5/8″ X 16 1/4″ X 19 7/8″. A 10-frame medium box is 6 5/8″ X 16 1/4″ X 19 7/8″ and a 10-frame shallow box is 5 5/8″ X 16 1/4″ X 19 7/8″. Notice that only the box height changes from box to box. All of these boxes also come in an 8-frame size that has a narrower width, measuring only 14″ wide. It’s important to note that each size box has wooden frames that are specific to that size box.
Since Langstroth hives are a stack of boxes in these three sizes, different hive configurations can vary from apiary to apiary. Your choice of hive boxes may be based on your ability to lift heavy boxes or possibly on your desire to keep your equipment simplified or standardized.
Most beekeepers use a combination of boxes to build a Langstroth hive. Commercial beekeepers use only deep boxes for all parts of the hive, however, in your backyard apiary, you may choose to mix and match the boxes to meet your needs and lifting abilities. Remember a deep box filled with honey can weigh almost 100 pounds, while a medium box, comes in about 45 pounds lighter than a deep box. It’s for that reason that most backyard beekeepers use medium boxes as honey supers.
Frames in a Honey Super
Depending on the size boxes you choose you will need the frames in the corresponding sizes. Many beekeepers use one less frame than the box holds to encourage the bees to draw wider comb. For example, in a 10-frame box, to provide extra space they would evenly space 9 frames. This encourages the bees to make a deeper comb for honey storage. This produces a greater volume of honey than can be produced in 10 frames.
In our honey supers, we use yellow plastic foundation frames. We coat the foundations with beeswax that we harvest from the apiary. We have found that bees prefer coated plastic foundations to plastic foundations without a wax coating. To coat the plastic frames with a thin layer of beeswax, we use a small paint roller.
The very best frames to add to a honey super are frames with drawn comb. As you can imagine, it takes the bees a lot of resources to create honeycomb, collect nectar and pollen, make honey, and raise brood. As a new beekeeper, you may not have this option, however, keep this in mind when you harvest honey. Be sure to uncap the honey in the least invasive manner and then carefully stow the frames of drawn comb to use in next year’s honey supers. While the bees will likely need to repair the honeycomb, it takes much less resources than creating comb from scratch.
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Alternatives to Plastic Foundations
Some beekeepers choose not to use plastic in their beehives. Some frames have a wax base. Rather than a sheet of plastic, a thin layer of wax is used in the frames instead. Some of these frames have wire in them to give the wax some stability. Keep in mind these wax-based frames are more fragile in a honey extractor and can tear apart in the extraction process. Medium supers or shallow supers will hold up better than deep supers, should you choose to use wax foundations in your honey frames.
Some beekeepers produce comb honey. Comb honey is produced on frames with starting strips. Rather than provide honeycomb or empty plastic frames, the frame has only a narrow strip at the top. This gives the honey bees a place to start to develop the honeycomb and fill it with honey. These foundationless frames are later removed and cut into chunks. The honeycomb and the honey are bottled together without extracting the honey first. As a child it was such a treat when Uncle Donald would open the hive and give us a big chunk of honeycomb to chew on!
When To Install a Super?
In your first year of beekeeping, you likely will not add a honey super to your beehives at all. The first year is dedicated to establishing a strong colony of bees. The bees will need the honey they produce to survive the winter. This is especially true if you purchase a nuc or package of bees that will need to produce all new honeycomb for the brood nest. While I know it’s tempting, it’s best to allow the bees to establish themselves well before trying to harvest extra honey.
Once your colonies are well established, supers are added to the apiary during the honey flow also known as the nectar flow. While this time period varies from state to state depending on the climate. This is determined by the time frame in which the most prominent nectar flowers are in bloom. In some areas, the nectar flow is long, while in other areas the honey flow is short. While there are websites that can help you determine the honey flow, one of the best resources is to check with your local beekeepers’ group to determine the honey flow for your area.
Add Space Slowly
It’s important not to add too much space at a time. Start by adding just one honey super to each hive. Providing a lot of empty real estate will stress the bees out. They will be forced to defend the space from pests that might try to overtake the hive, such as hive beetles or wax moths.
It’s amazing how quickly a healthy colony of bees can fill a honey super when the honey flow is strong. Keep an eye on your colonies and add a second super following the 7 to 10 Rule. When at least seven of the frames are full, add an additional box.
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When to Remove Honey Supers
Like all crops, the honey crop is a seasonal crop based on the nectar-producing flowers in your area. It’s good practice to remove the honey supers at the end of the honey flow. This means that once the majority of nectar-producing flowers have stopped flowering, it’s time to pull the full supers. While the bees will continue to forage as much as they can before the cold weather sets in, leaving the additional space of empty supers sets the bees up for problems.
Harvesting the Capped Honey
The process of making honey is quite fascinating. The bees fan the uncapped honey with their wings until it has the perfect moisture content. Once it reaches the perfect moisture level, the bees cap the honey. When you pull the honey supers, you may find that not all of the honeycomb is capped honey. This just means that the uncapped honey is not yet ready. If you extract too much uncapped honey, the honey can ferment in the jars. Uncapped honey that is removed from the bee box but left in the honeycomb can mold due to high moisture levels. The rule of thumb is that each frame needs to be at least 90% capped to extract. You can put frames in the freezer to help dry them out further. However, check the water content of the uncapped honey with a refractometer before extracting.
In our apiary, we save frames of uncapped honey for the bees. We store honey frames in the freezer to prevent molding and feed them back to the bees in the winter months. This is especially helpful for colonies that may have struggled with their own honey production in the brood boxes.
Super Sweet Harvest
Harvesting your own honey is one of the most rewarding aspects of beekeeping. A healthy, thriving colony not only sustains itself but can also provide an abundant surplus for you to enjoy. By understanding and properly managing your supers, you’ll be well on your way to reaping the sweet rewards of your beekeeping efforts.
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About the Author: Barbra-Sue Kowalski grew up on a small hobby farm. She was always drawn to farm life, however, she was stuck in an urban life far from her roots. Barbra-Sue was a single mom for 13 years, raising her 3 children on her own. She met Philip in 2018 and they married in 2021. Between the two of them, they have 5 grown children and 5 grandchildren. These empty nesters are following their dreams! As they both turn 50, they are building their off-grid homestead to live the life that they dream about. Learn more about Philip and Barbra-Sue here. Contact them here. To leave a comment on this post, please scroll down.
Thank you for sharing such an insightful piece. I particularly appreciated how you broke down the complex concepts into digestible information. This was exactly what I needed to read today.
I’m so glad it helped! Thanks for stopping by! Good luck with your apiary!