On Mon, 14 Oct 2002, Mark Walker wrote:

<concerning Ross Round supers, the bees wouldn't build on them>

I see from your address that you are quite far north (British Columbia),
and you might be having the same problem I had.  The first two years, the
bees wouldn't touch the RR super no matter how much I crowded them or how
strong the honey flow was, instead they would build and fill burr comb in
every little nook and cranny they could manage in the rest of the hive. It
was a mess.  They also were quite reluctant to draw out new supers
of foundation in general, although not as bad as the rounds, and really
didn't like to work the frames on the ends of the super.

It occurred to me that most of the advice people give about making comb
honey assumes that it will get really hot in the summer (well over 80 F
(26 C) for weeks or months at a time).  That just doesn't happen here
(northern Michigan, right next to Lake Superior), so I wondered whether it
might be a problem with the RR supers being too cold for the bees to
easily draw comb.

This year, I painted most of my supers dark green instead of white, so
that the sun would warm them quickly in the morning.  This seems to have
done the trick, as the one hive with RR supers filled them just as fast as
the other two hives filled their regular supers, and I got two supers
worth of beautiful rounds from them.  The other hives were also a lot more
vigorous, and built nicer comb much faster than I had previously seen.

This makes sense to me, because it would be hard for the bees to
really get into a RR super to warm it up, because of all the plastic
in the way that would tend to break up a cluster.  They therefore have
to be brought to wax-working temperature from outside heating.

So, if your summers tend to be on the cool side, try painting a few
hives a dark color (if you haven't already) and see if that helps.

--
Tim Eisele
[log in to unmask]