Greetings all:
 
I need some advice on how to deal with the scattered honey I've found in
the extracted supers I put back on the hives for the bees to clean up.  I
extracted about a month ago and put the supers back on the hives over
an inner cover, expecting the bees to clean them up.  This was at the
same time that others were discussing the problem of crowding the bees
down into the brood chambers after extracting and leaving them no place
to put honey except where the queen should  be laying to build up
population for the winter.  I had exactly the same concern so took the
opportunity to put on some deeps that had wax moth damage for them to
clean up and store extra honey in.  Well, this weekend I finally got around
to putting escape boards on in preparation for removing the "empty"
supers and found that most of them had a  little more "heft" than I
expected from empty supers.  Sure enough I now have 11 supers
on my two hives with very scattered uncapped nectar/honey in them.
The wax moth infested deeps i put on are cleaned up and full of capped
honey.  I was hoping to pull off the cleaned up supers and put them in
storage but.... now what?  I really don't want to set up my extracting
extravaganza again, apistan is on so the honey/nectar is no good for
human use, the bees have plenty of honey stored for the winter,  and
what I want is for them to clean out these supers and let me put them
away.  How do I talk them into the task. I could leave it but am afraid of
what kind of a fermented - crystallized mess I might end up with by next
spring.   Any suggestions?  Do bees normally store honey above an
inner cover or did I just leave them on too long and they had no where
else to store the fall flow once the extra deeps I put on were full?
Thanks in advance.
 
Alden Leatherman
Lansing, Michigan
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