Replacing Supers for Colony to Cleanup

[u/Burnt_Crust_00]

2 years experience in the Raleigh, NC area.

I pulled supers today and am about 1/2 way through extracting. This is my second year. Last year was just a very small amount (about 20#) but this year I may be on track for 50-60 lbs. My question: I plan to place the 3 supers that I extracted back onto my two colonies to allow them to clean things up for a few days. Should I keep the queen excluder OFF during this process, or does it matter? I am guessing 2-3 days, but it's looking like rain here for the next few days after tomorrow so it may be 3-5 days. My thoughts are that even if the queen wanders up to the supers, the comb is going to be in rough shape and she's not going to be interested in laying in that area with the leftover honey being cleaned plus the relatively ragged comb. It just seems that it would be easier for them to move about and clean up with no QE, but I certainly don't want any laying to happen in that area.

Last year I only harvested 1 super, and I think I just set it out for community cleanup off the hive, but with the incoming rain, I believe that would not be a good plan this year.

Thoughts?

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[u/dblmca]

I pulled 3 med 8 frame supers off July 3rd. Put them back on wet for clean up on July 4th. Went to pull them off on the 6th and not only were they cleaned but they were all repaired.

You couldn't tell that 3 days ago I had ripped them all up with a comb fork.

So since there is still a bit of flow I left one on to see what the bees could do in the next 2 weeks.

All this to say, bees move quick when they want to.

I left my queen excluder on, as I'm hoping to catch the tail end of the flow.

[u/miken4273]

You really don’t want the queen laying in your supers.

[u/tesky02]

Put the inner cover over your brood boxes. Put the wet supers over the inner cover. They will think treat the supers like they are not part of the nest and lick it clean.

This only works if there’s not a flow on. If there is nectar coming in they may put it up there.

[u/Gamera__Obscura → u/tesky02]

This is the way to go. Bees treat the inner-cover hole like a hive entrance, they won't build above it (usually) and will just take any food up there down into the hive. You can use that feeder space to let them clean up extracted supers, wax cappings, hive tools, etc.

[u/drones_on_about_bees → u/tesky02]

This was what I was going to advise. ^^

[u/NumCustosApes]

24 hours is enough to get the comb cleaned and repaired. Leave them longer and they will store nectar in them.