When to add a super or second brood

 This post is titled “When to add a super”. However it could accurately be called when not to add a super. 

At Woodside Apiary we take great care to ensure that our nucleus colonies are healthy, headed by a well mated queen and ready to expand quickly when transferred  Into their new full sized hive. This doesn’t mean a complete full sized hive including super or supers. The nucleus colony is a small beast, a baby. They need to be kept warm and fed well. The bees of course are well able to take care of themselves. We beekeepers can make their lives easier or harder!

A good nucleus colony on five or six frames will be well covered with bees and have brood in all stages. This brood must be fed and kept warm ......... When transferred to a full sized brood box with a crown board above the heat from the brood nest will rise, and spread outwards under the crown board, cool a little and fall, warming the adjacent foundation frames, thus enabling the bees to work these new frames, drawing new comb. 

It can be tempting to “stick a super on” at the same time as transferring the nuc. The bees now, keeping the brood nest warm have the heat escape upward and up again, through the queen excluder, through the super (or heaven forbid, a second super) cooling all the time. By the time that this once warm, humid air returns to the lower hive area (the brood box) it is cold and probably damp! The bees now have to work extra hard to try and rewarm this air to maintain the required brood temperature. The result: the growth of the colony that was ready to explode in numbers, build new comb and take advantage of the coming nectar flows to give us their keepers a honey surplus is thwarted. 

It is much better to match the hive volume to that of the bees, this is why our hive systems have multiple boxes after all. Allowing the bees to expand into the new available space a step at a time alows them to grow at their optimal rate. A layer of insulation above the crown board helps enormously too, conserving the heat of the rising air and maintaining the relative humidity, minimising the work that the bees have to do to maintain their brood nest and giving them the opportunity to expand quickly. 

Once the bees have drawn all fondation frames and there is a nectar flow on we can go ahead and add a second box containing foundation frames. If this is a brood box, moving a frame containing open larvae, encourages the bees to move up quickly. If we are expanding with a super, some drawn frames will help, if we have some. Beekeepers that do have super comb already drawn can add two supers.

How to transfer bees from a nucleus hive

So you have just obtained your first colony of bees, exciting! What do you do now? Here's a basic list of the steps you need to carry out to get your bees settled into their new home.

You hopefully have completed a beginner's course, these are run by most local BBKA branches. They also hopefully provided you with access to a mentor, someone that will be able to give you advice, answer questions and provide practical help when required. They could have invited you to help them with inspections of their own bees. You might even be able to purchase your first colony from them That's how I acquired my first colony, I "helped" my mentor to graft larva to raise a batch of new queens and bought the colony that built up to strength first.

Your hive should have been built and treated/painted prior to obtaining your bees, spring nucs can develop very quickly and, if they run out of room, they will swarm! They should therefore not be left in the nuc box for very long. You will also need a dummy board, frames with foundation and a feeder and of course a hive stand of some sort in position.

1. Collect your nuc in the evening, when the bees have stopped flying or in the early morning before they start to fly. Make sure that bees can not escape during the journey, use a hive strap or ratchet strap to secure the integrity of the hive/nucleus.
2. When transporting bees, they should be positioned so that the frames are in line with the direction of travel, in this orientation sudden braking will not cause frames to push together, crushing and killing bees, potentially the queen!
3. Place the nuc in position on the hive stand, the entrance should face the direction that your new hive will. 
4. Open the entrance. If your nuc has a disc type entrance, open it fully, do not put it to the queen excluder, the bees in a populous colony will over-heat in warm weather. This a horrible sight to see!
5. Leave the bees to fly and to settle down for a day or two. (This and step 6 are ideal and optional, I have transferred nucs in the rain immediately after relocation with no adverse effects on numerous occasions)  
6. Choose a warm sunny day when the bees are flying well, 
7. Move nuc hive to one side and place your new hive on the stand, with the entrance block in place to reduce the entrance. 
8. Place the dummy board and one frame of foundation in brood box at back. 
9. Open nuc hive and gently smoke your bees, if required, good bees should need minimal smoke, especially when the colony is small. 
10. Lift out the first frame of bees and place in hive, next to the first frame of foundation. Transfer the other frames of bees, making sure that they are the same way round and the same order as in the nuc hive. 
11. Add one frame of foundation at front. Push all frames towards the front of the brood box. 
12. Shake any bees still in the nuc hive into the new hive. If you place the nuc box on it's side a meter or so infront of the new hive, any stray bees left on the nuc will find their way home.
13. Fit crown board and empty super (this will be used to house the feeder). 
14. Fit the hive roof. 
15. Later, the same evening, give the bees a feeder full of syrup, 1kg sugar mixed with 1 litre of water. Place the feeder above the crown board, the super provides the height required to accommodate the feeder. 

Leave the bees to settle for a week or so, on inspection, ensure that the bees have enough room, add frames of foundation next to brood frames, front and back, as the previous ones are drawn out. Continue to feed as required until the brood box is full with drawn out comb. Do not split the brood by placing foundation between frames containing brood and or eggs!

Note: You will need either a second hive or an empty nucleus hive. At some point your bees will prepare to swarm and you should be prepared too! Get your equipment ready now and have a plan.

Good luck with your bees!