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the BEE-Llist at COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM.  It was edited to remove quotes
of previously posted material.


First you have to decide what your goals are for honey production. Do you
want to extract or do you want comb honey. If doing the comb honey thing,
then yes you needs lots of bees in the hive and you need to have most of the
frames filled out before putting on another one.  However, if you are going
to extract, who cares if the supers are not all full to the brim. When
restricting the space available to store honey, you are always at risk of
the bees storing the honey in the brood chamber and if this happens and the
brood chamber is restricted,( honey bound) and  the hive will shortly be in
a swarm mode. I put my first supers on in the spring when the dandelions
bloom and then always add supers to stay ahead of where they are with their
honey storage. I do not pay any attention to the 7 or so frame thing. If a
lot of bees are working an empty super, it is time to put on another to stay
ahead of them. This year with the massive nectar flow in this area and
filling a super completely in less than a week, if you do not check often
and stay ahead of them, you are going to have a honey bound brood chamber.
Also if you have a lot of bees hanging out on the hive front and you have
taken care of the ventilation, maybe you should look inside to see if you
have a honey bound brood chamber and all those bees have nothing to do with
the housekeeping chores being reduced. I usually do not have many swarms
from my hives and this year only had 4 out of 12 hives swarm. You have to
give the queen room to lay so the hive stays at maximum population to bring
in the big harvest. Instead of having bees hang out on the hive front. Let
them hang out in the supers and do a little work .



Estel Schultis

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