I've noticed that a number of people coming to the blog site are looking on information about how to super for honey. That's a topic that supports numerous philosophies, and they're related to the flow patterns in your particular area. For us, we want supers on by the end of May and beginning of June. We usually put out space for 80-120 lbs on the first round of supering. Then adding additional supers becomes a matter of individual hive performance. Here are some images that show what we often see as we go around:

In this super, the bees are just coming up into the box to store. The combs on the left are getting "whited" with fresh comb as they poke the first droplets of honey into the combs. If the box below this super is in the same condition, we would just leave them to get filled and be satisfied with signs of activity.

In the image below, the bees are getting more serious about storing, but putting most of the honey on the left side of the super--they're just deciding to work the right side too. Occasionally they like to fill one side of three supers rather than fill entire boxes. They will eventually work their way across the box if you stop adding supers until they cooperate Moving one of the storing combs to the empty side of the hive will also encourage them to work more of the box.

Below is a strong hive that is whiting the entire box at the same time. This type of hive can fill the boxes quickly and are the best candidates for drawing foundation when their honey boxes are getting more full.

Drawing foundation is always a bit risky in a honey flow--sometimes a hive will reject the wax-making process and swarm instead. Then you lose honey and bees. But, when you have a strong hive that is running low on space in a good honey flow, they will normally come around to drawing wax. The hive below is the type of hive that I would choose--lots of whiting on the combs, not much space in the honey supers, and not showing the brown/yellow staining suggesting they have been full for a week or two. Hives that have been full for some time are more likely to swarm if you try to force them onto foundation. Hopefully the hive below will just continue with their wax secretions on foundation instead of the older combs!

[That said, my absolute favorite way of drawing deep foundation is only possible in years with above average honey flows. I like to harvest the first honey supers from strong hives, and then place the deep foundation directly over the two-deep brood nest with no excluder. The queen doesn't like laying in the new wax when there are two boxes of dark combs below, so you very rarely get brood in the new-drawn combs and can simply take it as a honey super.--There will be more brood in the new cells if the honey flow drops off.]

The super below is not quite totally full--there is a little space in the middle that could be drawn out further. But noting the abundance of honey and also the burr comb between the top bars shows that the bees would have readily started another super if it had been there. We probably lost some honey to the brood box as the bees ran low on space. In the middle of such a strong flow, I would prefer to give this hive two more boxes, which would give us 10-20 days before needing to come back. One box can fill in 4-7 days on a strong hive in a strong flow.

The key for us is to stay AHEAD of the bees. If we waited until 700 hives have their boxes full, it would take days to get around with more boxes--and maybe a couple of weeks if we have to extract boxes first before having more empties to go out. In the meanwhile, we would lose thousands of pounds of honey for lack of storing space. For example. Let's say there is a great day when the hives all gain 2 lbs of honey, but the supers are all full. That means we lose 1400 pounds (2+ barrels) to the brood nest, the queen will have less space to lay her eggs (resulting in less populous hives three weeks out), and swarming impulse is raised. We want the hives working multiple boxes at the same time and to never get completely full. I'm becoming optimistic that we will cross the 100 lb average this year but some of the 2010 splits have some catching up to do.

We have a neighbor just west of our place who has allowed us to keep bees in his pasture/timber lot for the past twenty years. These days we do not use the area for honey production--now it is a queen yard.

Here are some of the 5-frame nucs I've set up to raise the 2010 queens for sale:

I think I started the queen project back in 2004--experimenting with a few dozen cells to figure out grafting, cell-building, development of the queens, and the art of picking queens off the frames to mark them on the thorax with my handy paint markers. After more than twenty years around bees, I had never picked up a queen until I started producing them. I usually take them by the wings--sometimes by the thorax. The next step was getting used to catching workers to place as attendants into the queen cages!

I use the full-sized frame equipment for a few reasons. The queen nucs pull a lot of deep foundation for us, people are welcome to purchase nucs through the summer, I can use a queen nuc to requeen our own hives, and I get a number of new hives to overwinter when I collapse everything together in late August/September. But it is true that I generally cut them back to 1-2 frames of bees between queen cycles though--hunting for queens in lots of bees takes minutes rather than seconds. I've already given the postal employee some free honey for staying late waiting for me to show up with the queen shipments!

Altogether it has been very educational and usually a lot of fun. (Two-week runs of bad weather that annihilate all hope of successful matings are what takes the fun out of it.)

Next year I need to greatly increase production to provide you with the queens in demand--but thanks for the orders to date and I'll continue to produce as many as capacity permits in the next couple of months!

Back in late May we put out our 6 5/8 honey boxes and started to await the first honey flow. We often get some kind of surplus going into the overwintered hives somewhere between mid-May and the beginning of June.

Here's an image of a yard setup for supering: Most of the hives are getting two honey supers, and a few of the splits are ready for a box of deep foundation along with a 2-gallon bucket of syrup.

This year the early flow was exceptional--probably the best I've ever seen. Some of our strongest hives put away 80-120 pounds of honey before the wettest June in Iowa history got underway. Now we've had about a week of sunshine that has given us hope for a crop off of the 2010 splits as well.

The good news is that we have already extracted some honey and put the first boxes back out to be filled a second time. Our last bumper crops were 2005 and 2006--It would be wonderful to break the 100lb/colony mark again. Unfortunately there is another 1-3 inches of rain in the forecast for the next couple of days which might kill the flow again. Hopefully we can dodge the heavy precipitation and stay on track for an impressive July.