Mats Andersson asked, about supering:

> ...do you put the second super on top of the first one or under it?
> I did some very unscientific tests myself and really couldn't tell
> the difference.

Don't feel bad - the scientific tests found only a minimal advantage
from adding supers under existing supers.  Their data was very close
to "couldn't tell the difference".  I read at least a summary of their
results in either Bee Culture or ABJ, I forget which.  The bottom line
of the study was "don't bother to do the extra lifting".

BUT - There are a few things you can do to improve matters:

Check out the "Imirie Shim", which is nothing more than a wooden
assembly that looks like a (thinner) frame of an inner cover with
an entrance or two cut into it.  I don't know if there have been any
official studies (George Imirie may know), but lots of people swear
by them.

The idea is to add upper entrance(s) that are above the brood chamber
during a nectar flow.  I use these, and I also have dual top entrances cut
into the underside rims of my inner covers.

While I use Imirie Shims, and agree that they work, I don't understand
a few specifics about multiple entrances in a nectar flow scenario:

    With multiple entrances, is there still a central
    congregation/interaction area, where returning bees
    will brag about their foraging finds? (Note that I avoid
    making any statements about dance, exchange of odors,
    tiny topo maps, or GPS coordinates as the specific
    communication mechanism, as I do not want to start
    another jihad on this list)

    If there is not a central area, where do the "unemployed"
    bees hang out, waiting to be recruited by a "bragging"
    forager?

    If there is a central congregation/interaction area, do the
    extra entrances simply reduce entrance congestion?

    Anyone have a clue for me on this?

Another practice that works for me is to take the capped-over frames
one tends to find towards the center of a super, and move them to the
two outermost positions, and replacing the uncapped/unfilled frames
in the center of the super.  This is extra labor, but it overcomes the
bees' apparent reluctance to work on the outermost frames, and yields
"full supers".  I'll do this to the topmost super when I add another on top
of it, which is fairly easy to do.

           jim

           farmageddon  (where we add 2 mediums of
                                 drawn comb at a time)