Where Do I Place The Supers?

by Chappie McChesney
(Alachua, Florida)

New beekeepers come up with all kinds of questions for the mentor to answer.

One new beekeeper asked a manager at Dadant and Sons as she was buying supers for her new hives, "How far from the hive should I place the supers"?

How do you answer that without embarassing the customer?

Hi Chappie

It's very difficult to remember how strange everything is to a novice. I think now that we have the internet with so many pictures and videos this may happen less, but I'm sure it still happens.

I well remember reading books about 'how to start beekeeping' and being very puzzled. I was recently describing how to take a swarm out of a tree using a cardboard box. Because I was explaining to the person face to face, using gestures he got it. But when I've tried to write it down it sounds extremely complicated.

You simply shake the bees into a cardboard box, turn the box upside down and place on the ground with the opening at the bottom, and the bottom at the top, propping the edge up with a stone.

Until you understand that the bees will hang on to the box and crawl upwards to the bottom of the box (now the roof), it seems bizarre. I would have expected the bees all to fall out, but they don't. This is compounded by the difficulty of explaining that having turned the box over, the bottom of the box becomes the top.

So perhaps the answer to the super question would be, "It depends whether you're using deeps as supers, mediums or regular shallows."

The Bee Guy