287. Porter escapes . . .

Much to our surprise when we looked at the bees a few days ago we discovered a very heavy super. A quick look at the frames showed that much of the honey was capped ie ready to harvest.

Although we are mindful that the bees will need about 25kg of honey to take them through the Winter, we decided to add a second super with a mixture of bare frames and frames with plenty of uncapped honey.

We put the new super just above the brood box and the heavy-with-capped-honey super at the top. Between the two we put a clearing board which is a crown board with two porter escapes. The porter escapes allow bees to exit downwards but not return into the honey-filled super.

Photos below show how a porter escape works and a crown board with two of them in place.


We have now left the bees for a couple of days, the idea being that when we return no bees will remain in the super we want to remove.

That's the idea, anyway. We shall see!

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