A honey super is a specialized component of a modern beehive, designed as the colony’s surplus food storage area. It is a box placed above the main living and breeding quarters, providing bees with extra space to deposit honey. Beekeepers add these boxes during periods of high nectar availability, known as a nectar flow, with the intent of harvesting the stored honey.
Defining the Super and Its Primary Function
The core function of the honey super is to separate the beekeeper’s harvestable honey from the colony’s essential food reserves. Bees naturally store their honey above the brood nest, and the super simply provides a controlled, modular space for this behavior. When a strong nectar flow is underway, the colony can quickly fill the frames inside the super with nectar.
The worker bees process this collected nectar by reducing its moisture content until it reaches approximately 17 to 18 percent moisture. Once the honey is ripened, the bees seal the cells with a protective layer of beeswax, known as capping. This capped honey is finished and ready for the beekeeper to remove and extract. Providing this extra space also helps prevent overcrowding in the hive, a common trigger for swarming.
Distinguishing Supers from the Brood Box
The primary distinction between a honey super and a brood box, the lower section of the hive, is their intended use: one is for reproduction, the other for harvest. The brood box is the permanent residence of the queen, where she lays eggs and the colony raises its young, or brood. It also contains the honey and pollen necessary to sustain the colony year-round.
To maintain this separation, beekeepers often use a tool called a queen excluder, a flat screen placed between the top brood box and the honey super. The excluder’s grid-like openings are precisely sized, allowing the smaller worker bees to pass through but physically blocking the queen’s larger thorax and abdomen. This ensures the honey frames in the super remain free of eggs, larvae, and pupae, simplifying the harvesting process.
Physical Variations and Internal Components
Honey supers, generally used in the standardized Langstroth hive system, come in three main depth categories: Deep, Medium, and Shallow. The Deep super is the tallest, measuring about 9 5/8 inches, but it is rarely used for honey because a full box can weigh up to 90 pounds. Medium supers are 6 5/8 inches deep and are the most common choice, weighing about 60 pounds when filled. The Shallow super is 5 3/4 inches deep and weighs around 40 pounds when full, preferred by beekeepers who need a lighter load.
Inside the super are frames, which are rectangular wooden or plastic structures holding the foundation, a sheet of beeswax or plastic embossed with the hexagonal cell pattern. Bees build their honeycomb on this foundation, using the drawn-out comb to store the finished honey.
Management and Honey Harvesting
The timing for adding a honey super is a key management decision that directly impacts honey yield and colony health. A beekeeper should add a super just before or at the beginning of a strong nectar flow, when the bees have filled approximately 70 to 80 percent of the frames in the top brood box. Adding it too early can make it difficult for the bees to regulate hive temperature, while adding it too late can cause congestion and initiate swarming.
Once a super is placed on the hive, the beekeeper monitors the frames for signs that the honey is ready for harvest, primarily looking for fully capped cells, which indicates the correct low moisture content. To remove a full super from the hive, beekeepers may employ a device like a bee escape, which allows bees to leave the super but prevents them from returning. Alternatively, they may simply brush the bees off the frames before taking the box away.