Subject: Re- Extracting - advice needed

From: [email-masked] (Peter Waring)
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 1994 18:05:35

It saves much trouble to place a Porter bee escape in a board below the super 
overnight before removing the super. Most of the bees will go down and join 
their friends during the night, and only a few will remain when you carry the 
super away.

Also, whilst it is OK to put the emptied frames near the hive for the bees to 
clear up when you only have one hive, to do so with numbers of hives around in 
the fall can start an epidemic of robbing of the weaker hives by the stronger. 
Much better to put a super with the emptied frames on top of the hive and let 
the bees clean up that way.

Peter Waring
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (David J. Harry)
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 1994 22:19:57

>the bees clean up that way.

I've tried this in central Calif. with little success: the bees simply start 
refilling the partially empty supers.  American Bee Journal article 
suggested putting an empty super (no frames) between the brood chamber and 
the supers to be cleaned.  This presumably prevents the bees from refilling 
the upper supers.  I tried this also, with limited success. Ultimately, I 
went back to placing the empty supers close to the hives.  You have to watch 
carefully, since they'll begin to disassemble the comb when the honey is 
gone!  I've had no apparent problem with robbing behaviour.

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From: [email-masked] (Dr G A Cooke)
Date: 30 Sep 1994 09:09:56 +0100

>gone!  I've had no apparent problem with robbing behaviour.

Putting a crown board, or any board with a hole an inch or so across
in it, between the hive an the super to be cleaned seems to work.  The
bees don't seem to want to include the super in their workspace and 
will move the residual honey down to stores if there is room.  Because
they do not have to leave the hive they do not seem to get robber minded.
Towards the end of the season, reducing the entrance to a couple of inches
or so helps the colony to protect itself from robbing and this is an
important thing to do when feeding syrup especially with a weak colony.

graham