STORING HONEY SUPERS
Storing Supers using Wax Moth Crystals
4 Options
Regardless of how you protect your bees' hard earned honeycomb from wax moths, it's critical! As soon as you've harvested, and let the bees clean your supers for 24 hours, it's time to store them until next year.
- The easiest, and most guaranteed-to-work method, outlined in detail in the video above, is to use wax moth crystals. Be sure to air out your supers for 2-3 days before use next spring!
- If you have the freezer space, freezing your supers works! Just be careful because frozen comb is extremely fragile!
- If you only have 1 or 2 supers per hive, you may be able to leave them on your hive all summer. Each hive should have a minimum of 2 boxes (a brood box, plus a box above your brood box). If both of those boxes are full, adding a 3rd box is a great idea to help keep the hive cooler, and let them expand further if you are trickle feeding. You can remove it during the fall/winter if it becomes empty.
- A more risky method is standing your supers vertically in the open air under a roof of some form. Wax moths don't like the light and moving air. However, a hungry wax moth can still cause damage, as can other pests and animals. This method does not work too well in the Southern US, where we have longer summers, and warmer winters.
