Building New Hive Supers

You would think a snowy winter would be a quiet time for beekeeping but it's a surprisingly busy time.

While my bees are keeping warm and eating stored honey, I'm getting ready for the next, relatively short honey producing season.

In Missouri, the season runs from May to July. Some high-producing hives may produce a second, much smaller honey crop in early fall.

One of my chores this winter is to make new supers with new frames. The supers will be added to the hive tops as extra honey storage room. Each hive needs to store around 70 lbs of honey to make it through winter. Once they get that much honey, anything extra is honey I can harvest without taking winter food away from the colony.

After glueing and nailing four super sides, I painted only the outside and started to fill them with brand new frames where bees will make wax comb and store honey. Only six more to go!

Charlotte