The Garden Hive Super
After several requests we have developed a super for the Garden Hive. The Garden Hive Super will allow a much bigger colony to occupy the hive before crowding leads to swarming.
Unlike the supers stacked on Langstroth hives, our super does not have much to do with honey harvesting. Top bar beekeepers generally harvest honey as the honeycombs fill up, taking the combs from a few bars at a time and replacing the emptied bars back into the hive to have new honeycomb drawn by the bees. That does not mean that a keeper can’t wait until the entire hive and super are full before harvesting, only that it is not necessary.
Harvesting honey from an old fashioned Langstroth usually requires mechanical extraction equipment to separate the honey from the foundation. That is also why Langstroth keepers use queen excluders so that there is no brood comb mixed with the honey cells. Garden Hive keepers know that it is important that the queen have access to all areas of the hive and that the colony be allowed to organize the hive as they choose. When harvesting, honey comb mixed with brood is easily separated with a pair of scissors – the honey cells are cut away and the remaining brood cells on the bar are returned to the hive.
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The Super comes complete with 25 special bars that allow your bees to access the Super from the main hive. We recommend that you have your super in place when you first introduce a colony to your Garden Hive as the Super’s bars replace the standard bars in the main hive. You can add the Super any time, but you must be able to replace at least some of your standard top bars with Super bars so the bees can move back and forth.
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You can purchase the Garden Hive Super separately and add it to your Garden Hive (2.0 model only) or purchase it with a new hive in our Beekeepers Package and save some money.
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Click HERE to purchase.
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Please note that the Garden Hive Super only fits the 2.0 version and does not work with the Lang Adapter.
