The books / Forage and the Nectar Flow / chapter 14 of 21
Putting a super on at the start of a flow
All chapters
- The two-kilometre circle
- Why six kilometres costs more than it brings
- Three and a half kilos of nectar
- What a flow actually is
- Maple, willow and the first dandelions
- Fruit blossom and hawthorn
- The main flow: black locust and clover
- Linden in July
- The gap in the middle of the year
- Goldenrod and the winter stores flow
- Ivy, the last flow
- Oilseed rape, the flow that sets in the comb
- What makes a jar monofloral
- Putting a super on at the start of a flow
- Pulling it at the end
- Reading a capping percentage
- Eighteen point six percent
- Honey that ferments
- Crystallisation is physics, not spoilage
- Creaming by the Dyce method
- A year of varieties and what each is worth
A super is not a bucket held under a tap. The comb has to be drawn before it can be filled, the bees have to be persuaded to move up into it, and none of that happens on the day the flow starts.
The calendar puts supers on an anchor ahead of the crest, in the second week of April with the dandelion and the first fruit bloom out and the reading at 0.25, so that the box is already familiar when the spring crest arrives at 0.89 and again when the linden peaks at its full 1.00 in July.
Late is worse than early. An empty box on a colony that does not need it costs a little heat.
Try this in the game: Add a box to a hive that's filling up.