Labelling up Supers

A Natinal Super will happily hold eleven frames in which bees can store extra honey which the beekeeper may harvest. However that's eleven frames with a bee space on each side. What most beekeepers do to maximise the amount of honey you can fit in a super is reduce the number of frames leaving wider combs and less space in the box lost to bee space and foundation. If you were to put 9 new frames of foundation in a box things wouldn't go very well as the bees would make wild comb in the large gaps between the frames so instead you start with eleven frames then once they're drawn out you remove one and alter the spacing and when they're drawn out again repeat the process taking you down to 9 frames. To get the spacing right you can use plastic spacers called Plastic Metal Ends ..they used to me made of metal, now they're made of plastic. You then change the size of the Plastic Metal Ends to widen the gaps. I've tried them and to be honey I find it a bit of a pain changing them so I use the other option which is metal castellations attached to the inside of each super permanently spacing the frames.

Ideally the drawn comb will wind up with 9 frame spacing but I still needed a few 10 and eleven frame Supers to help me get them drawn out that far. Some of my existing supers were already  set at ten and eleven frames and one with plastic runners. You can't tell from the outside how many frames are in a super so I decided to make things simpler for myself by spraying the outside with the numbers of frames -or an R in the case of the one with runners. I also sprayed the number of frames in my nuc boxes onto them too as they look alike too.

Stencil time

With my increased number of hives I needed extra supers and got a set of six very cheap Cedar supers from Easipet via Amazon. They were supplied without nails or glue but it still worked out a pretty decent purchase as they were so cheap. There was the odd crack here and there but nothing a bit of wood glue and clamp didn't sort out. They were supplied with some metal runners which would be fine if you use plastic spaces I suppose. They seem quite good quality so I'll be using them in brood boxes instead. I put 9 frame 
castellations into all six of the new supers.

Six new supers.

As the frames got drawn out I switched them to the new nine frame supers over time. It's not exactly rocket science but makes things a little simpler for me.

It's all about the numbers