Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
flow, you will probably notice an increase in foraging activity and fresh nectar in the
combs.
Making sure your bees have enough room to store honey is now a very important issue.
If all has gone well, your young colonies will be large and still growing. If you initially
purchased colonies of bees rather than nucleus colonies or packages, the same situation
should apply. Your aim, therefore, is to ensure you have the maximum number of bees
available to take advantage of any honey flow the flora in your area can provide.
You have undertaken most of the manipulations to maximize honey production (i.e.
preventing swarming and keeping your colonies healthy) and, if good nectar sources
exist, you should now give your bees sufficient room to store all this nectar. To begin
with, you should add honey boxes to the hive - a process known as supering up.
Researching honey storage
Research has shown that bees can be induced to store more honey than they require
for their own purposes if they have drawn comb available in which to store it. As long
as there is a honey flow and sufficient bees, they will keep on storing more and more
honey. There are many theories about whether you should place only one box at a time
and allow the bees to move into it and, when it is half full, add another box, or about
whether you should add the second box under the first or on top of it, or just plonk all
your boxes onto the hive in one go.
I haven't seen any research on this but I have always found it easier simply to place
each new super on top of the last and, usually, to place at least two supers on at a time.
I have generally used drawn comb whenever it was available, and I usually put a comb
of honey into a new super from the super below just to 'invite' the bees up. If you need
to employ foundation, use it during a good honey flow only, otherwise the bees will not
draw it out well.
