building supers

The honey super is a big empty wooden box built to bee specifications, allowing for what is known as bee space.

First you build the super - it's the empty box below.

Then the supers are painted to help them weather the outdoors in which they stay. I'm painting the one on the left Peach Beige (after all, I'm in Georgia) and the one on the right Golden Blonde. When I had my sunporch redone, I went through eight quarts of paint to find the perfect color, so I'm using the leftovers to paint my hives.




Here's a super into which I've begun putting "frames" for honey storage. The frames are made of wood with a thin piece of honey comb nailed into them for the bees to have a foundation to use to get started building their own honey comb.




Here the last frame is being installed into the super for Bermuda (the peach beige one). You can see the tiny nails that hold the honeycomb foundation to the top of the frame