How quickly can bees fill a super?

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Zante

Field Bee
Joined
Feb 22, 2016
Messages
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Location
Near Florence, Italy
Hive Type
Dadant
Number of Hives
2
I put supers on my hives last weekend, brood box not quite full, but all foundation drawn and a good flow on. The supers had only foundation, so I suppose quite a lot of nectar will have to go in there before it's full.

What are the chances of having to prepare another super to add this weekend?
 
I hived a prime swarm last year in a 14x12 box.. that's 11 frames.
They drew all 11 frames and filled 8 of them with nectar in 8 days..the other 3 were filled with brood.
 
Depends on the size of the colony, a double brood working a mostly drawn super can fill and cap in a couple of days, a single colony in a week usually
 
They're in dadant boxes, nucs that I bought this year and hives about five weeks ago. They were fairly quick in drawing the brood frames I gave them, but that was during the acacia flow, I'm not sure what's around now although lime and chestnut are round the corner.
 
DOH!

I was worried I had to get extra supers, but I have sic supers on site some of them with drawn frames!

I forgot the old folks who own the land said I could use their old equipment.
 
Drawn frames are gold . Bees can get straight on with filling them

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Two hives 14x12 filled and capped two supers each on osr in five days but had done nothing for the previous three weeks.
 
I suppose it depends on the bees, mine for instance seem to be taking about 2 years, lazy so and so's
 
I hived a prime swarm last year in a 14x12 box.. that's 11 frames.
They drew all 11 frames and filled 8 of them with nectar in 8 days..the other 3 were filled with brood.

Swarms imho are more prone to work harder. I hived a swarm on 30th April in a 6 frame poly nuc on mainly old drawn comb and later moved it to a full size (10 frames) Polyhive and within 10days they had drawn all frames and are up to 8 frames of bias!

They are getting demareed tomorrow and supers added!

ps lovely calm bees aswell!
 
Gosh that's fast YorkshireBees! So glad you asked the question Zante. I'd better check our hived swarm quick.

Is this weather dependant as it's been sunshine, showers, hot & cold here all week?

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Gosh that's fast YorkshireBees! So glad you asked the question Zante. I'd better check our hived swarm quick.

Is this weather dependant as it's been sunshine, showers, hot & cold here all week?

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Swarms are a different beast altogether,( as Yorkrshirebees just said) they are monster comb builders. if you have supers you want to get builtout, stick a load on and feed em tons of syrup, they just keep going. Its a lot cheaper to build out frames with syrup rather than honey. If i remember rightly, its 7 kilos of honey to 1 kilo of wax built. i hived a monster swarm last week. their drawing a whole lot of comb now, probably two supers worth in a week.
 
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Swarms are a different beast altogether,( as Yorkrshirebees just said) they are monster comb builders. if you have supers you want to get builtout, stick a load on and feed em tons of syrup, they just keep going. Its a lot cheaper to build out frames with syrup rather than honey. If i remember rightly, its 7 kilos of honey to 1 kilo of wax built. i hived a monster swarm last week. their drawing a whole lot of comb now, probably two supers worth in a week.

Exactly that.

In fact the next decent swarm I get (if any) will be building a load of new brood comb for me!
 

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