Buck Rut wrote:
 
> Greetings all,
>      I use medium depth supers for my honey supers.  Being new at
> this, I am not sure how many supers to have on hand for the honey
> flow.  Is there a rule of thumb for medium supers?  Also, are shallow
> supers on their way out?  Is there a rule of thumb for how many
> shallow supers to have on hand per hive?
 
As a rule of thumb, I plan on 4 supers per colony.  Two-queen colonies
will take more, but if you extract more often and return the supers to
the colony, you'll be OK.  The most I ever put on is seven supers
because of height limitations. But because I only extract once per
season, usually the 2-queen colonies have all seven filled side to side
and top to bottom.  Often a new package colony will only use one or
two.  A new swarm colony might not use any, depending on when in the
season it was hived.
 
As to the shallow supers, I wish they had never been invented.  I bought
a lot of my equipment second hand, and shallow supers occasionally came
with the lot.  It is a bother to keep the shallow frames and the medium
frames separate while extracting.  I hope that they are on their way
out, but I doubt it.
 
Ted Fischer
Dexter, Michigan USA