# Long Term Honey Storage



## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

re the first part of your post, bees who winter with more honey, swarm more. It's almost like there is some kind of hive calculator. The hive quite early in the season, becomes aware of the amount of honey they have, and behave accordingly, if they have a stupidly large amount of honey they will breed like crazy so they can swarm like crazy. (Assuming there are no health issues).
I sell bees so I use this characteristic, I overwinter the hives with quite a bit more honey than is absolutely necessary. That causes big build up in spring, providing me with plenty of bees for splitting and nuc making. Just have to be careful to catch it before they swarm though, because that is their intent.



Solomon Parker said:


> I suggest a more conscientious approach to beekeeping. I suggest leaving comb on the hive year 'round, leaving enough honey (plus a factor of safety) for the bees to survive the winter unfed.


More conscientious than what? What you suggest is what I've already been doing from 40 years back. Also, I never fed a supplement in my life.

However, in the US with big areas of monocultures and other issues, which are not like the natural environment bees come from, feeding and supplementation may be necessary, to make up the environmental deficiencies caused by humans.


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## monrovi (Jan 22, 2012)

Solomon Parker said:


> I suggest leaving comb on the hive year 'round


I'm curious. "Leaving comb". I assume that you are talking about empty super comb? Do you ever have problems with wax moths getting into it during the winter? And then in the spring the bees start to move up, do you rotate the bottom brood boxes from the previous year to the top? Seems like storing the empty comb on the hive would be nice. I like to know how you manage that?


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

monrovi said:


> I'm curious. "Leaving comb". I assume that you are talking about empty super comb?


That is correct. I return empty 'supers' to the hives after extraction is complete.





monrovi said:


> Do you ever have problems with wax moths getting into it during the winter?


No. I do have problems when a hive dies in the summer, but that includes all the comb in the hive anyway. Wax moths move quickly after about June here.




monrovi said:


> And then in the spring the bees start to move up, do you rotate the bottom brood boxes from the previous year to the top?


Sometimes. No hard and fast rule. It depends where they are brooding. They don't always move up. Some hives restart brooding in the bottom, some in the top. It has more to do with entrance location and stores location than anything else. My management in that sense is probably closer to what Dee Lusby called Pyramiding Up. I try to add foundation to most hives every year and the poorly drawn frames or ones with excessive brood comb get rotated up to serve as honey comb. Darker comb is better for extracting because it's stronger and doesn't blow out as much.




monrovi said:


> I like to know how you manage that?


Well, I don't know how much more I can explain. Boxes full of empty comb go back on the hives. The only time I store comb off of a hive is in the winter when a colony has died, I'll take the comb back to the shop to sort out what should be melted down and what should be used for nucs in the spring. But that's only after freezing has started and wax moths aren't an issue any more. I do use upper entrances on most hives.

If you have any more questions about this method, I'd be happy to answer them.


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