# Cell cize - Wintering bees on honey with foundationless frames



## Pedro Blom (Feb 25, 2015)

Hi all!
I want to overwinter my bees on honey, but are concerned about the cell size in the foundationless supers.

I use foundationless frames and 4.9 plastic frames in my hives.
As i want to regress my bees to small/natural cell size I have used most of the plastic 4.9 in the brood nests this summer, and most of the supers above the queen excluder are foundationless.

My intention was to leave a super of honey on top of the brood nest for winter, but now I have come to think of that the bees built a bigger cell size for storing the honey in the supers.

What will happen if I leave these supers on the brood nests? The bees will cluster in this super, that now is a new brood box, and consume the honey throughout the winter, then the queen will start laying in it the next spring.

Will I have giant bees next summer or will they rebuild to what size they want?
Would it solve anything if I put a couple of brood frames in the middle of the super?

How do you manage your winter feeding with honey?

One local beekeeper said I can put honey frames in a box below the brood box and rip the cappings. Then the bees will move the honey up to the brood chamber.

Any suggestions how to manage this are wellcome.


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Hi Pedro. Welcome to Beesource!

This is not an uncommon situation. If your brood nest comb is entirely SC, having a super of LC on top will not hurt at all. Come early spring as the bees have moved up to the upper part of the hive, the queen will move down and seek out the smaller cells to start laying in. Both Dennis and I have observed this in our own hives. Both fall and spring, the queen chooses the smaller cell size to raise brood in if given the option.

I know Dennis wrote somewhere on his site about only needing about 20% SC to balance the hive out.

https://goo.gl/sesPCZ


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## Pedro Blom (Feb 25, 2015)

Thank you for the straight and simple answer.


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Here's the page I was referring to:



> Drone sized cells occupy 18 percent of the broodnest. Large cell size made up about 60 percent. And small cell size about 22 percent. There’s more small cell comb toward the hive’s entrance and none toward at the hive’s rear. Drone comb was mostly drawn on the hive’s right side, away from the entrance. Worker brood was generally drawn on the left side, nearest the entrance. Vertically, the larger cells were closest to the top bar. Cell size decreased toward the comb’s bottom.


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## Pedro Blom (Feb 25, 2015)

Thank you Barry!


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## tulsafarmer (Feb 28, 2016)

Last year I left a super of honey on each of my hives for extra reserves. But in the early spring two of the 9 hives the queen was on and laying brood.
I put her on the brood box below which she also had laid in and put a queen excluder on that box so she could not come back up.


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## Pedro Blom (Feb 25, 2015)

tulsafarmer said:


> Last year I left a super of honey on each of my hives for extra reserves. But in the early spring two of the 9 hives the queen was on and laying brood.
> I put her on the brood box below which she also had laid in and put a queen excluder on that box so she could not come back up.


Thank you, that's an easy fix I will remember.


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## johngfoster (Nov 2, 2015)

As mentioned above, a queen excluder will keep the queen in the brood box and out of the larger cell honey supers. If you perfer not to use a queen excluder, as some do here, then what Barry said applies.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Some of you folks act like having a sheet of LC foundation within flight distance of your colonies is going to cause a collapse.


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