# Definition of "super"?



## Judy Bee (Jul 4, 2006)

Last week I was preparing a talk on equipment for our annual one-day 'bee school' for beginner beekeepers and found a confusing definition for a "super".

A long time beekeeper supplied me with a diagram, which defined a "super" as any box containing frames for bees. There were deep supers and western supers. But this wasn't what I learned some years ago.

When I first started beekeeping a "super" was a box used for surplus honey. If you used a queen excluder the supers were on top of it and brood boxes were below it. Also the term "supering" was used as a verb to describe what you did when you put on a box for surplus honey.

Can anyone give a definitive definition, or is "super" really one of those ambiguous terms?

-Judy


----------



## sierrabees (Jul 7, 2006)

Thirty years ago most beekeepers used a standard configuration using deep boxes for brood chambers and smaller boxes for those heavy honey frames. At that point the lower box or boxes were refered to as brood boxes and everything above that was a super. Nowadays many of us use the small boxes throughout the hive and refere to all boxes as supers. I don't think it is important what terminology you use because all parts of a beehive are really defined by their function in that particular hive, and that function can change for a variety of reasons.


----------



## wade (Apr 1, 2006)

I've always taken it to mean, the box or boxes above the brood chamber. Most folks use it that way. The only time I see it used as "any box" is at Glorybee.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Super is a latin word that means above. A super is any box above the brood.


----------



## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

A "box" has a bottom, both "honey supers" or "brood chambers" are open. 

>which defined a "super" as any box containing frames for bees . . .
Sounds like a nuc


----------



## JWG (Jun 25, 2004)

*Super?*

Originally, "superhive" = additional chamber added above the main hive.

"Super" generally refers to a box of combs intended for surplus honey storage (and harvesting). This, regardless of the size. Usually this is short for "honey super."

As opposed to a brood chamber. The box of which, esp. if the deep size, is called a "hive body." Just to make it interesting.

Nowadays people use various sizes or combinations of sizes for brood and/or honey and so the terminology can be confusing. E.g., you can have a shallow brood chamber, or a deep honey super.


----------



## doc25 (Mar 9, 2007)

I found this very confusing as well. I've heard people using super for honey and super for honey/brood. Took a while to figure it out (I'm not very bright). Seeing as the boxes can be/are identical then they should all be called supers and only defined by what is in them.


----------



## Judy Bee (Jul 4, 2006)

Wade, the diagram I used was based on Glorybee Food's diagram. Since I live around 1.5 miles from Glorybee (and you live nearby, as well), I think I'll have a talk with them and show them my old edition of ABC - XYZ of Beekeeping. No matter what the configuration of brood boxes and honey boxes are being used, it seems like "supers" should be what are used for honey, no matter if they are deep or Western or shallow supers - even Ross Round supers 

-Judy

PS I just "supered" my hives today: 2 supers for the strong hives, one super for the weaker. Maples in full bloom and bees are making drone cells.


----------

