BethsBees · Ontario, CA · Honey · Oct 2, 2026

Bees cleaning wet supers — above the inner cover or stacked outside? And why does open stacking go so wrong?

Ontario, second year, three hives. Extracted six mediums on Wednesday and now I have six wet supers dripping in my garage and two different pieces of advice. My neighbour, who's kept bees for decades, stacks his wet supers outside about 30 m from the hives and says the bees have them clean in an afternoon. Another beekeeper at my club nearly fell over when I mentioned this and said never, ever do that. Last year I put one wet super straight back on top of a hive and the bees just... kept it. Stored honey up in it and I ended up with a wet super on the hive in November. What's the actual correct way? I've read "put it above the inner cover" but I don't understand why that works differently from putting it directly on the top box. How long do you leave it? Days are 14-16°C right now. And what exactly goes wrong with the open stacking, if I'm 30 m away?

#wet-supers#robbing#extraction#fall-management

▲ 1 votes 💬 1 replies ✅ Solved

1 reply

MayaBees · Oct 2, 2026 · ✅ Accepted answer

The inner cover is the whole trick. Wet supers go on top of the inner cover, under the lid, with the inner cover's hole open and everything else closed. To the bees, anything above the inner cover reads as "outside the nest", so they treat the honey as a find and carry it DOWN into the brood boxes instead of storing it in place. Late evening, one or two supers per hive, 2-3 days, then pull them. Open stacking: in a dearth the smell of exposed honey reaches every colony and wasp for a mile; once the stack is dry the frenzy moves to your weakest hive.

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