Dont Add Supers Too Early! Why Premature Supering Can Slow Colony Growth And Reduce Honey Yield

It's the end of February, your bees are filling the boxes nicely. I'm going to tell you in this video why it's still too early to add supers and then give you a bit of advice as when's best to add supers to your colony. So previously I did a video talking about that 80% rule that applies to both the brood box and further shallows, and a really simple overview of that is once the bees are covering 80% of the frames in the box below, whether that's the brood box or the super, that's the point you want to go and put the next box on. You can over-super, under-super, whichever way you want to do it, but that's a really good rule of thumb to be used throughout the season. And if you're opening your bees, say back end of February, and I don't know if you can see behind me at the moment, it is a lovely day here, it's like 13 or 14 degrees, moving towards the end of February, the bees are out, they're foraging, they're bringing back pollen, they're expanding now. There's definitely brood within the brood chamber, and also the bees in some instances are covering over 80% of the frame. So you might think, well, Definitely going to get the supers on because the 80% rule says once they're covering those 80% of the frames, get the supers on. I've had my fingers burnt on this, I reckon at least 3 out of the last 10 years that I've kept bees. You need to remain patient, and I'm going to go inside and I'm going to show you some of my colonies at the moment. I'm not pulling out frames, I'm just going to crack the roof off, show you how big and active some of those clusters are. The reason for that is that if you go and put your supers on using that 80% rule now, throughout March the bees act in a very strange way indeed. They consume stores like it's going out of fashion. They're building up that colony to a point where they're going to take advantage of the early flows throughout the season. Now you can put your supers on back end of February if you want, and you might get lucky and the bees just might expand and think, wow, I need some space, I'm going to go up to the supers. You're getting a little bit of a surplus coming in and they start drawing out the wax, and then you get a really nice early season honey crop. But generally what happens, and you have to consider that it is still winter, is that You'll get a nice weekend of warm weather and the bees are covering all the boxes. You put your supers on and then it snows and you get 2 weeks of snow. And then you're faced with a really difficult decision, which is, do I feed through the supers? Which is something that we never do. We don't like feeding through the supers either with syrup or with fondant. And then if you don't like feeding, the only other option is to go back kind of with your tail between your legs and take the supers back off again. And for us as a commercial operation, That is not something that we will even entertain anymore. And you would've seen this in the video that I did last year, which was a really strange title, which was, should I continue feeding my bees or should I add supers instead? And I'm gonna slightly regurgitate the content of that video now because what I recommend people to do is exercise a little bit of patience. A very, very unlikely, I nearly said they won't, but I won't say that. Your bees are very, very unlikely to swarm in February. They're not. There's a slightly bigger chance that they're going to swarm in March, but I've never had a colony swarm in March, especially not in North Wales. It's very, very difficult for them to swarm when there's not drones that are being created. So you kind of have this buffer, and I know it gets drummed into everyone, which is you need to make sure your bees have enough space. Give your bees enough space and that stops them swarming. I would take that advice with a pinch of salt in February, and I would take it with a pinch of salt in March as well. For us at Black Mountain Honey, we will let them expand and keep on going through that brood box until it is Bubbling over the top. If you're concerned that there isn't enough space for them, what I would suggest doing is pulling out some frames on a warm day. Out of frames, you'll probably find frames that are just completely full of stores. Take those frames out, recycle them, and put some frames of foundation in there. Give the bees something to do. It's a good idea to get them recycling those frames anyway, but you just want to bide your time. We never put a single super on before April. That is our rule. We will never ever put a super on before April. We've never lost a swarm doing it that way. You'll get slight regional variations, of course, across the country. The south is going to be way in advance of us and the north is going to be a little bit behind us. So you need to judge kind of what your cutoff date is. For us, it's 1st of April. We won't put them on before the 1st of April. And I just encourage you to see how long you can keep the bees in that box. And I assure you, the chances of them swarming is Very, very low. So before we go any further, let's go and take a look at a colony over there. I'll show you what I mean, and I'll show you why I'm not putting a super on them just yet. Right, this is the colony we're going to have a look at here. Check out the entrance. The bees are really, really active here today. It's about 13 or 14 degrees. I'll get the lid off, I'll show you what the bees are looking like inside, and then we'll make a call on whether we put a super on or not. So this colony here couldn't really explain this rule any better. Look how many frames they're over. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Got one frame that they're not covering at the end there. It's a 10-frame box, so they're over 9 frames. I know there's a little bit of void over here, but look at them, they're in a winter cluster. Don't use the 80% rule in winter, it definitely doesn't work. These bees here, they have got a long time before they're filling up this box. And even if I came in here and they were filling all of this space as well, and it was a complete 10-frame booming box of bees, I still wouldn't be going in and putting a super on, because my fear, especially in North Wales, is that we're gonna still get a cold snap. I'm gonna end up having to come in, maybe do some emergency feeding. That's not efficient for me, certainly not good for the bees, because you give them a false start and then further disruption. You're taking off the supers probably when it's cold. These bees here, they are still in winter cluster mode. I'm gonna get that polyashphalt feeder back on, get them nice and warm because they don't want me disturbing them. So don't rush it. You've got plenty of time yet. We use the 1st of April rule, and then for the rest of the season, we do use an 80% rule. So if you haven't seen that video already, check out this video here, which is a really good rule of thumb to use throughout the season as to when to add the next super.