Foxhound Bee Company

What is a Honey Super?

Beekeeping is hard enough, and with all the terminology used by beekeepers, it can be even harder. We do our best to avoid using confusing beekeeping terms and stick to the basics. Especially when talking to beginner beekeepers. But if you are asking yourself, “What is a honey super?”, we can help with that. Using jargon is actually one of the things on our list of ways beekeepers make it hard on themselves. 

It’s a word that is thrown around a lot by beekeepers, and if you aren’t into beekeeping, you probably wouldn’t know it.  We have a really great blog that breaks down all the parts of a beehive as well. 

Super is short for superstructure, which refers to the boxes placed on a beehive for bees to store honey. Historically, a super was always a medium, 6 5/8-inch tall box, or a shallow 5 3/4-inch tall box. Both are traditionally referred to as supers, exclusive of the deep 9 5/8-inch box on the hive’s bottom.

Since the word super is short for superstructure, it could actually mean any size box that is extra and in addition to the “365 hive“. 

This is what we mean by that: there are a certain number of boxes a beekeeper leaves for the bees to live in for 365 days a year. Depending on your area, this could be 1 to 3 boxes, with 2 boxes being the most common setup. 

The boxes on the hive year-round could be called the “structure”. Only during times of lots of nectar collection are additional boxes added, which would be your “super” structure. 

Whatever size box is used, deep, medium, shallow, 10-frame, 8-frame, or 5-frame, these boxes can be considered supers.

Hives with honey Supers

In recent years, it is less common for beekeepers to use deep boxes for excess honey storage and more common to use medium boxes exclusively for their whole hives. The box size does not dictate what a bee will use it for. 

Typically, deep boxes or “deep hive body” are used on the bottom of the hive by backyard beekeepers. In some commercial honey operations, deep boxes are used for the queen to lay eggs in as well as for honey boxes. This is the most efficient and cheapest option for bees and beekeepers but extremely heavy. 

Bees can use any size box for any purpose they need. A beekeeper who has been keeping bees for a long time may refer to a medium box as a super, regardless of whether it is used for brood or honey. This is only out of habit because they may have started beekeeping before anyone had the idea of using medium boxes for the whole hive.

Superstructure Double Deep
Superstructure

Usually, you will hear the term super when beekeepers are talking about the honey flow. Usually, it’s something like this, “Make sure you super up before your bees get too crowded.” Or “Make sure you add your supers so your bees can make more honey.” This specifically means adding a medium super to the hive body in preparation for the honey flow. 

When it is time to harvest honey, these medium supers or medium boxes are removed from the hive. Leaving behind the brood chambers or “structure” of the hive. The size of the hive constantly fluctuates throughout the year, typically growing in the spring and summer and shrinking in the winter. 

The same term is used for both 10 frame and 8 frame equipment, so it’s not a term or a technique that is specific to a certain size of equipment. Another way to think about what supers are is to think of where the queen will lay eggs. The queen does not lay eggs (usually) in the honey supers because she has enough room in the brood boxes below or there is a queen excluder keeping her out of the honey boxes. 

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