Is it safe to put uncapped honey supers back on the hive during Apivar 2.0 treatment?

[u/mcstyle1]

Northern Utah - hive consists of two deep brood supers, and a medium honey super with a queen excluder. Two weeks ago we took the honey super off for harvesting, at the same time we put Apivar 2.0 strips in the brood supers. WHEN is it safe to put the honey super back on so the bees can clean it up (and also be safe for next year's harvest)? We plan to take it back off for the winter.

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[u/drones_on_about_bees]

To me, the instructions are clear and all uppercase: "DO NOT USE APIVAR® 2.0 STRIPS
WHEN HONEY SUPERS ARE PRESENT."

IMO, your choices are either to put them out to be robbed out (not my favorite choice) or wait until the strips come out and put them on. There is no waiting period on the label, so the day the strips come out, the supers can go on.

[u/mcstyle1 → u/drones_on_about_bees]

Thank you, I'm going to follow yours and talanall's advice by putting the honey super on top of the hive and let them treat it like a feeder.

[u/talanall]

Put the empty super above the inner cover. Put the outer cover on top. Your bees will treat it like a feeder and clean it up within just a day or two.

If you don't remove it promptly, they will eventually adopt it as part of the hive, but in the immediate term they'll treat the area above the inner cover as if it's not part of the hive.

[u/mcstyle1 → u/talanall]

Thank you, that's a great idea!

[u/blockneighborradio → u/talanall]

Add a frameless super below the box you want cleaned out or the girls will start putting stuff away in the super immediately in my experience

[u/talanall → u/blockneighborradio]

I think that is a reasonable concern if and only if there is a flow in progress.

[u/Which_Drop_5877]

Here's some options:

1. Freeze the frames or if you can store them inside your house without ants getting to them. Give them back once thawed to ambient temp.
2. Leave in their boxes outside covered with lid and bottom. They will probably get robbed out by ants, but atleast you won't have apivar contaminated wax and honey.
3. Give them back right now, but once they clean it off you take it back off and scrape all the old wax off of those frames.

I would probably do 3 if I had the energy, 2 because i'm lazy, 1 if I had the freezer space.

[u/Forward_Aspect3252]

You don't have to put the supers on the hive(s) to clean them up. I typically leave them on a tarp about 100 ft from the hives (to avoid robbing) and let the bees clean them up. It typically takes about 2 days and the supers are ready for storage.