> Mr. Morris...
First, please, not Mr., anything but that.  Aaron is preferred but I'll answer
to just about anything you can say if front of children!

> are you leaving the frames in the supers or setting them
> out separately?
Setting them out separately is too much work.  I have in the past tried a
number of different strategies.  I once left the open supers in a bee yard
and started one of the worst cases of robbing I ever witnessed, to which I
attributed heavier than normal winter losses.  By the time the bees were done
beating up on each other they were in very poor shape.

I have put them back on the hives on top of the inner cover, under the outer
cover.  This too can get bees excited and hankering to rob, but if equipment
is tight enough it doesn't get too severe.  And there have been years when the
bees started to fill up the empty supers rather than "lick them dry", in which
case I moved a few back under the inner cover.  An empty super between the
inner cover and wet supers has been recommended, but I'm not sure that's
necessary.  However, stacking the wet supers back on the hives is a lot of work
and it's also a lot of work to clear the bees again from the supers, unless you
wait for a cold morning when the bees will be clustered in the brood chamber.

I think the best strategy I have found is to stack the wet supers in a
location far removed from any hives, and far removed from any humans.  The
bees WILL find them, and the frenzy to lick them clean can get pretty nasty
between the bees, but the hives in the apiary remain civil to each other.
The feeding frenzy can also be very disconcerting to humans of a non-bee
persuasion, so a remote site is highly recommended.

> Do you try to give them back the same
> colonies, or doesn't that make a difference?
Well, one should always be concerned about disease, but I'm usually pretty
confident that my hives do not foster such.  I know before harvest if any
equipment is suspect.  If anything, the remote site method should be of
more concern in that you can't be sure that the frenzied bees are your own.

The safest method is stacking the wet empties atop your own hives (if you have
the time and inclination) and ideally the same hive from which you harvested
the supers if you can keep them straight.  The more hives you have the harder
it gets.

Finally, the beeswax market may be heading in a direction that you might not
consider harvesting your drawn combs, the drawn combs may be worth more than
the wax.  The largest consumers of beeswax in recent history have been
beekeepers.  With more and more beekeepers switching to plastic foundation
there is likely to be a lot of unsold wax out there that can be had for a very
reasonable price.  You might consider buying your buddy's wax rather than
harvesting your own (that's two plugs for joining local beekeeping associations
in one day).  On top of that, with the current fluvalinate contamination scare
another major beeswax consumer (the cosmetics industry) is also way down in
consumption.  One might speculate that the bottom will drop out on the beeswax
market.

Aaron Morris - Still thinking supply and demand is a tricky game!