Making more Honey

• #1- How honey bees fill honey supers.

• #2- How to get more honey!

Now let’s get into the core of each point! The world of beekeeping is waiting for you!

Point #1- How honey bees fill honey supers.

Honey bees love to work from the center first, and then move and expand outward. It’s the same in brood boxes as well as honey supers.

As a result, they will work on drawing wax on the inside, side of a frame first and then the outside, side of that frame, alternating as they move from frame to frame out towards the edge of the box and then upward into the next box.

Have you ever noticed when peeking into your hives during a nectar flow that the middle frames of the box have more honey and wax than the others?

As they fill the frames and box with honey, they begin to cap the honey with a layer of beeswax in the same manner and pattern as they filled it. It’s generally considered “ripe” honey once the moisture content is down between 15-18% and 75% of the frame is capped.

This prevents the beekeeper from getting a runny honey. A nice thick honey is what we ideally want. Keep in mind that on hot days, even the thickest of honey is going to have a low viscosity.

As the bees fill your honey super, we can manipulate the frames in such a way that uses their natural center-fill habit for our mutual benefit. Let’s look at how we can do exactly that!

Point #2- How to get more honey!

Once the bees have worked the first middle 6 frames (in a 10-frame box) or the first 4 frames (in an 8-frame box), we can then begin to switch frames around so that they will fill out the empty, bare frames more quickly. I will explain how below but if you want to see it in action then check out my video here:

How to Manipulate Honey Frames for Maximum Honey!! The Hive Doctor//YouTube.

So imagine your honey super:

• The two middle frames are primarily full of honey and the bees are working on capping it off.

• The next frame after each of those still have a lot of honey but not as much as the middle two. These four frames can stay where they are or you can move them to become the outside frames.

• Our goal is to take our outer frames that the bees have not yet touched and exchange them for the fuller ones in the center.

• The best way to do this is to checkerboard the frames, turning the bare sides inward, facing the center of the box as you do so.

The bees’ natural tendency to fill the center first and the inside of a frame first will encourage that habit to work on the less-drawn-out frames first now that you have moved them closer to center.

Since they are now checkerboarded, the bees now also have a guide to draw the bare frames more evenly as well.

What you can do after manipulating your frames:

• You can now give your bees time to draw out these frames.

• When they are nearly finished and if you still have a strong flow going on, give them another honey super.

• I recommend under-supering; meaning that you can put your new super under the one that you manipulated the frames in.

• Now with that your colony has an almost filled honey super on top, this will draw the bees up through your new honey super more quickly, encouraging them to fill that space up with honey; provided you’re utilizing a queen excluder.

• Your bees can make more honey, the resources are out there and by helping use the bees’ habits you can collect honey faster as they bring it in by utilizing a method like this.

There are ways that I help beekeepers learn and understand things like this in my book below. It’s taking beginner beekeepers and helping them to go beyond the books, beyond beginner levels and leveling up their experience as they truly begin to KNOW their bees. Get your copy by clicking below 😉

Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom 😉. I want to hear from you!