👉 Should We Add Another Super To The Beehive?

Zane's first nuke, episode 7. So episode 7, Zane is back. Did you watch the episode?

Do you want me to lie or do you want me to tell you the truth? I didn't, I haven't had a chance.

So you've not seen it, but let me fill you in. Yeah, does it not look a little bit taller to you?

It does, but it looked tall anyway, but we, we did a fake extension if I remember rightly, didn't we?

I've moved things around, Zane.

Yeah.

So let's jump straight in, get your hood up.

Hood up.

Okay. Right, so while Zane does that, I'm going to take the roof off, and everyone at home knows that I came back in after you went off on holiday.

Yeah.

And, uh, added in some supers.

It was a really nice holiday, by the way.

I should have said— should have said welcome back, welcome back.

Yeah, thanks.

But I did, I came back. The last time we said about maybe not adding a super, didn't we? But you wanted to.

Yeah.

I reckon you were right and I was wrong.

Okay, can I have that in writing?

You can have it in writing, definitely, because look at this. When we take the polyasphalt feeder off into the super—

So wait there, so this is the super, isn't it?

It's like an extra box, yeah.

Geez. That's like what the hive looked like 2 weeks ago in the brood— is this the brood box? Brood nest?

Yeah, the brood nest.

Wow, that's crazy.

So I resisted the temptation to put another super on because I knew that it wasn't going to go that much, but look, look at all these frames. A field of frames. They've kind of got some bits in.

Wow. So wait there, hang on. So if this is Have we still? Have we got a crown board on?

Nope. So if I if I go underneath, there's a queen excluder.

A crown board. What's sorry? What's the difference between a crown board and a queen excluder?

So crown board lives at the top.

Yeah.

You've got your polyacryl feeder instead. Okay. Crown board stops the bees getting into the roof.

Okay. That's what I meant. Yeah. Queen excluder.

Yeah. So queen.

So technically this should all be like. This is like honey.

This is honey, isn't it? So I put in a mix of foundation. So we've got some frames of foundation somewhere. The bees have started drawing it out. And then some like super mature drawn-out frames. These keep going on and on and on. And then like in the middle, look at that, loads of honey on there.

Packed, isn't it? Yeah, it's got some good weight to it, hasn't it? Some weight, yeah. Wow. And this has been— so with these, obviously they were technically not foundation, but they weren't Full of anything?

No, they were. So they were drawn comb, yeah, but with nothing in it. They've just gone out and collected all of that nectar.

So everything in there is what they've collected, I guess. This has all gone very fast.

It's gone fast. And remember I said last week, it's about like, what did we say? Not watching the kettle boil. And then you said, but it does boil eventually. It does, doesn't it? And we weren't here, but luckily I got the super on. So this could have gone really wrong.

So if you weren't here and if this was my beehive and I went on holiday, what would I have come back to?

So I think we might have just about got away with it.

Yeah.

But you got to think of it from just the amount of bees that are in the box. So all of the bees that are in the box here would have probably fit in this box.

Okay.

With all the nectar coming in, but it would have been closer than I thought it was.

Yeah.

Yeah, so although we've got all of these bees up here, these bees were just bees that would have been downstairs in the brood nest.

Yes.

So you'll see when we go downstairs in the brood nest, you're not going to be like, whoa, it's so— it's super busy down there. You'd be thinking, hmm.

They're just kind of like spread out into both.

They're just spread out a little bit like that. So there's loads of space down there. I'd be surprised if they'd drawn out There were 3 frames of foundation in there 2 weeks ago. I bet you we still find a bit of foundation in there.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Do they just kind of— do they just save that as like a reserve or something?

Yeah.

And they just move up and think, we don't need that, we'll just—

Well, this is where like the management bit of it comes in. So if I went in here, say we had the brood nest and I put 4 supers on, all have drawn comb, this is what the bees do every time. They'll just like do these frames.

Just like the centre ones?

Yeah, just the centre ones. They'll ignore all the foundation on the side. And then they'll just do it up in the middle. It's really, really annoying. So that's why we add them on kind of slowly to try and get the bees to draw it out that way as well.

Yes, okay.

Okay, cool. Right, so let's get that off. Should we go in the brood nest?

Let's have a look.

Nice.

I'm gonna put this anywhere?

Yeah, a little look for the queen underneath. It's always just good to have a glance. That's it.

So what are we looking for? Down here, 'cause obviously space isn't necessarily an issue 'cause they've got the super on top. Yeah, I'm a bit lost.

Yeah, so good question. So managing space is about managing the space upstairs in the supers and managing the space downstairs in the brood nest and look at them just separately. So look at that top down. Is that covering 80% of the frames?

Is it? Not quite, is it? It's nearly there.

Not far off. And the reason I ask that question is saying, do we need to add another super on in the supers? Do we need to add space in the supers? I would say no, but very, very close. But then similarly, you need to manage the space downstairs in the brood nest as well. So if you've got, say you went in here, yeah, and you wanna see the queen and 8 frames of brood and a couple of frames of stores, but you went in and found 10 frames of stores.

Right.

And a queen that couldn't lay anywhere, you wouldn't just put it all back together again. You'd say, okay, well I need to manage that. I need to take the frames of stores out, put some drawn comb in there or put some foundation in. So managing it, and it's a different management from up there.

Okay, I'm with you.

Up there's just generally quite easy, which is just give them more space.

Yeah.

Managing it down here can be more space. You can double brood, or it can be like taking frames out and adding them, or configuring, or checkerboarding, or loads of different things.

There's a bit more to it down here then, I take it.

And all of those little different techniques we cover in great detail in our 14-Day Beekeeper Course that I think we need to sign you up for, Xand.

It's gonna have to happen, isn't it?

Yeah, how have we not done that already? Right, go on then. So I'll leave you to do the inspection then.

So best place to start, I take it you just Because this is obviously brace comb, is it?

It's a good way of seeing the thing.

Just like where it's all joined to the side of the wall.

I'd look at that and say that's definitely not the frame to go. The one next to it looks nice.

Yeah, I was gonna say that looks pretty good.

But the red frame looks nice to me as well, just it's like completely free of brace comb, so it's up to you.

Okay, should we try that one?

Yeah, I think red's nice. Arsenal won the league, innit, so let's look at the red one.

You should have told me Arsenal won the league, I'd never have known. That's just drawn comb. Doesn't look like there's much in there.

Yeah, but that's good. Last week that was foundation. So that's the first sign of them drawing it all out. They've drawn it out, haven't they? There's a tiny bit of foundation up in the corner. Okay, so that's progress. Yeah, that's nice. That's an open frame. That's still space for the bees.

Okay, which is good.

Okay, so you've got one frame out.

Yeah.

How do you want to do it now?

Well, it gets a lot easier, doesn't it?

It does.

Is it just a case of like splitting them there?

Yeah, and like tell me what you're looking for, what you're thinking.

So we want to see, I guess the queen needs space to lay.

Queen needs space to lay.

So we can't have too much stores going on.

Yeah, so frames like that are perfect.

That's perfect, yeah.

That's exactly what you want, bit of dead space, bit of room for expansion.

Do they tend to put stores and brood in the same frame, or do they tend to like Interesting, yeah.

So when the colony's small, you'll see frames where you've got brood in the middle and then like stores around the edges. And then as the colony expands, you tend to find all the brood is in the section here.

Yeah.

And then it's flanked by pollen, and then outside that is stores.

Okay.

That's quite repeatable across all of the colonies in any, in any box once it gets to that size. People were commenting on saying how much like your handling skills were improving and stuff.

Thanks, guys.

Zane loves a bit of good feedback.

Yeah, I do. I doubt myself a lot, I think, with a lot of things, and you're like, oh, am I doing it right? But yeah, it's good to know.

You can put that back in. I wouldn't— yeah, I only ever take the first one out just to give yourself a bit of space. Okay, cool. The queen could run off.

If I go— if I check these outer 2 here, then I can kind of work back this way.

Yeah, sounds good.

You can tell that back one there's got loads of stuff Yeah, so that's drawn out again.

Okay, so that's another frame from last week or 2 weeks ago that was foundation that is now fully drawn out, and it's like dead space again, nothing in it. Perfect.

You can see a bit of nectar coming in there.

Yeah, really nice open nectar, a bit of pollen, happy bees. I love seeing frames like that.

Yeah, because that's like, that's the start, isn't it? Oh, I can see the queen.

Where?

Just on this outer frame here, funnily enough. See her tucked in there?

Oh yeah, should we get her out while she's in there?

Yeah.

Shall I grab her? So there we go.

Do a swap.

Oh, I like— that's a cool frame. So this one here shows exactly what you were saying before, which is the mix of these capped stores here, lots of open stores there, and then all this section here is completely laid up by the queen.

Let's get a little zoom in on the queen there.

You can see the queen just wandering around there doing her stuff. But Zane, see if you can zoom right in on the back of there and see if we can get those eggs in view. So I'm interested to see what's going there. So that's a good frame because there's not only eggs. Did you see eggs on that or did you see lava too? So let's get—

definitely see the eggs.

Right, so let's, let's go in on that bit there because that's quite cool. So right there. Okay, queen is there.

See, that's weird. I can— I feel comfortable having my veil down, but I'm still gonna go and hide.

So is it fair warning to everyone yet? These are chilled out, calm bees, but as they progress throughout the season and as you will see on this series, They're not going to remain this calm the whole way through. They're going to get bigger, they're going to be doing gats, they're going to be a bit tetchy. I'm not going to have my veil down the whole time.

Okay.

I know early season it's okay, so don't, don't like get lulled into too false a sense of security.

Just here on the edge. Okay, cool.

Right, so I'm going to place her back in, keeping her very, very safe.

All right.

And you've done— so that was a frame of stores that she was on, and then those ones are done, and then if you want to work that way. Okay, so now that you've seen the queen, like we've seen the queen, we've seen eggs, we've assessed for space.

Yeah.

But what was it, what was you looking for?

Stores.

Yeah, so stores, it's like, if this was me, the only thing yet that I'd want to be looking for is, are there any swarm cells anywhere?

Oh, okay.

Because I've got, I know I've got 2 dead frames. I've got 2 frames where there's, the bees have drawn them out, but there's no stores, there's no brood. The queen can go and lay in there. So I'm fine for space. I've seen loads of stores, I'm fine for stores. I've seen the queen, I've seen eggs. Everything seems to be fine. There could be some swarm cells here that we've missed.

So why would they make swarm cells when the queen's fine and laying and doing her job?

Because the bees are very, very annoying. They don't always follow what we teach in 14-Day Beekeeper.

Okay.

But yeah, they're just annoying sometimes. They don't follow the rules, but on the whole they do. And then what's more important is working out when things go wrong, kind of how to fix it, I'd say.

Okay, so we got more Loads more eggs in there.

Okay, before we go any further—

Brood.

Oh well, yeah, brood. Yeah, the capped brood there. I was going to show Zane a play cup there, and I was about to say, oh, it's like the video we just did over there with the squeezing the queen cells.

No, no, no, that is— if, let's say, if there's any swarm cells on here, they're getting left before you're gonna squish them, because that is disgusting.

All right, I feel, I feel really, really bad. Yeah, so we're doing a short, doing a little video, and just squeezing some queen cells, and I said to Zane, it's a little bit It's disgusting, but it's not that bad. And we squeezed it straight at the camera, and I think Zane nearly was sick everywhere.

It reminded me of like the spot popping videos you see online, the ones I just scroll straight past. But some people will sit there and watch them because they find it satisfying.

It is a bit disgusting.

Yeah, it's vile. Yeah, and I've got to sit there and edit that footage, and I'm dreading it.

What I was going to say is on this frame here, look, you've got the beginnings of these cells. I know, sorry, mate, but it's an important one. If you grab, if you grab the A1. So what these are called here, so what you've got is you've got some capped worker brood and then you've got some capped drone brood, but then that one at the bottom there with the bees on, that's a play cup. So that is where those swarm cells are going to be created. The bees will convince the queen to go and lay an egg in there, or the bees move an egg in there, no one really knows. But once they're— when they're like this, all they are are play cups. They're just empty cells. There's no egg, there's no larva, there's no royal jelly, there's nothing. So all they are at the moment is just a little warning sign to say, yeah, we're aware that it's swarm season and we might swarm in a few weeks' time. You want to keep an eye on them. I like to take them down as I go, and you just want to kind of go in and just take them down, have a little look. So they're the things that I'm looking for. That's what we're looking for. We're looking for swarm cells, we're looking for play cups, we're looking to see if there are any play cups, what's inside them. Is it an egg? Is it a larva? And then depending on what you find in those cups, you do different things.

Okay.

Looks like your swarm. your swarm management.

That just looks like capped brood.

Beautiful frame of capped brood.

Capped brood, yes. I love the colour on it.

Yeah.

Okay, I think we're safe on that one.

Okay.

Same again, there's a bit, some open stores on that side.

Right, so I think we're all good, Zane.

We're looking pretty safe there.

Yeah, I don't think, like, the further you go towards you now, the further you're going to go towards like pollen and the stores frame there.

Okay.

But I'm going to rush it on because I think that camera's going to overheat. I don't want it to overheat on the first day. So there we go, another frame of brood.

Yeah.

That's the kind of look that I would do. And then go in and then look at that, Xane. I'll let you have that last frame over there that's not the stores one. Pull that one out.

This one here?

Yeah. So what are you seeing on that one?

Zilch.

Zilch.

Nothing.

So another frame of foundation. So I said that they might like ignore that down there.

Yeah.

Not an issue. It's another dead frame. So you've got 3 dead frames in there.

Okay.

So I'm thinking we're good for space in the brood box.

Yeah, definitely.

Let's put that all back together. You can— I always like to shake the last one off.

Sweet.

Reduces any squishing. But there we go. The question is then, shall we add another super?

Um, yeah.

So let's have a look. So how many frames are we covering now, bearing in mind you've got 3 dead ones?

Yeah, so what's that? 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So 8 definitely. There's like a 9th one maybe. Yeah, 1, 2. Yeah, so there's 9 frames.

So I'm happy with the space in the brood box.

Yep.

Yeah, and then let's put the super back on. And what did we say about like how many were in there? Like it was borderline, wasn't it?

Yeah, there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Yeah, it's quite a few. There's quite a few fields, right?

So what do you think we should do?

I think we should add another super.

Right.

Surely, because the weather's as it is.

I don't think we should add another super.

Damn it.

Yeah, no, and I'll tell you why. Yeah, because see how it was borderline last time? Yeah, it was like, shall we add a super, shall we not add a super? And then we went with no, and then we followed it quickly back up with yes. That's like a big leap. You think that's a A 40% leap in volume.

Okay.

Do you think the bees are managing that volume well at the moment? Are they occupying all the space?

To be fair, yeah.

Do you think they are?

Yeah, I think— no, I think there's space left for them to move into.

Exactly, there's a lot of space left both in this super and the one below. And I'm thinking worst case scenario, if we come back in a week's time, are they going to have swarmed due to lack of space?

They're not going to have— there's like 6 frames there in total, isn't there?

So I can see it from the beginner perspective, yeah, which is, well, we added the super last week, so let's do it. I'm talking from experience here. I think, I think we should not, and I think we'll come back next week and you'll still see that there might be a dead frame. You'll still see that it's not full up here. They won't have hit the ceiling. It's not the end of the world putting the super on though.

Yeah, no, I'm, I'm more than happy. We've, we've got one super on. Yeah, that makes me happy. So we— I can be a bit more patient and wait for the next one.

Just for anyone at home though, if you're If you're wanting to make sure that your bees absolutely do not swarm, just put the other super on.

Yeah.

'Cause the only thing that's gonna do, say we put the extra super on, yeah? What's gonna happen is when we come to harvest any spring honey here, we're gonna have 2 really sparsely populated supers.

Mm-hmm.

And we're gonna have to come back in and start being like, oh, I'll take that frame of foundation out and put it in there.

It's more work, isn't it?

It's more work. And they don't cap the honey anywhere near as well.

Right.

You want them to kind of like be quite busy.

Is it 'cause they kind of like sort of half a job?

Maybe so.

'Cause there's so much going on and—

Maybe it's like a heat thing.

Okay.

They'll need a certain temperature, which they get from having like lots of bees in the hive. They certainly need that for drawing out wax, and they will use it as well for fanning the honey down. The bees are much more efficient in a smaller size box, and we do, we cover this on 14 Day Beekeeper, which is talking about you want to keep bees in the smallest amount of space as possible without triggering swarming.

Well, if you told me that before I started this, then I'd say no.

Yeah.

Let's not add another super because they They've still got space.

But then conversely, at this time of the year, if you put another super on, it's going to do no damage to the colony whatsoever. It's just going to make honey harvesting a little bit tricky. So if you're not doing a spring harvest, say we're not going to do a spring harvest, yeah, let's stick the supers on. Let's stick another 2 on and just—

That's it. I think I'm just paranoid about the whole swarming thing. I'm like, oh no, we don't want them to swarm. But yeah, no, I'm more than happy to leave them like that. And then next week we can definitely add another super.

So what I think is going to happen next week, and let's talk about the weather here, we've got end of the week looks nice, so we've got like 2 or 3 days of nice weather, and then it looks rubbish next week. There's a lot of rain.

Okay.

It's not that good. And as I said on the Hive Q group, that change of weather pattern, so from really warm to cold and drizzly around the end of May, early June, for us triggers the June gap. So I think we're going to come back here next week, they're going to not have filled it, they're going to be a bit aggy, it's going to be raining, and we're going to be like, oh, let's do this quick. I'm definitely going to have my veil up.

Yeah.

I think it'll be a different week next time.

And an umbrella.

And an umbrella, yeah. But I'm excited to be proved wrong.

Yeah.

Like I was this week, eh?

Should we get the lid on?

Let's get the lid on. Zane's like, come on, let's get back home. He's had enough. He's had enough.

Not at all.

Right, let's do it. I'm enjoying it, Zane.

Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's coming along nice. And you know what, it's nice having a bit more knowledge. Um, I've still got a lot to learn, but it's, you know, it's kind of sticking in a little bit.

It is nice. And Zane, Zane like corrects me on loads of stuff as well. We did a video earlier on about soda crystals, and there's me saying Two kilogram bag, and he's like he just says one point two kilograms in the bag, and you felt bad, didn't it? And then you don't feel bad about that. I love that.

You you are Mr. Miyagi.

Time to run the bloopers. I'll see you next week. I honestly don't know where the queen's gone.

Don't say that.

Ah! Whoa! That is a good. Okay, let's. Let's start that again. Sorry, mate.

No, that's alright.

Bloopers. Like James Bond. Ready? Nice. How many takes do you think it was at the beginning? It's because there's sticks in there. Who put sticks in?

Zane, come on, man. You can do better than that.

Okay, Shaggy.

I don't want to take the responsibility of the brand new camera dropping on the floor. That's fine.

Zane's First Nuke, episode 7.

That was so good. That was so good. There we go.