![jez-timms-HC9opzxKUgg-unsplash.jpg](/honey-super-vs-brood-box/jez-timms-HC9opzxKUgg-unsplash_hu3d03a01dcc18bc5be0e67db3d8d209a6_5412253_702x450_fill_q100_h2_box_smart1.webp)
I’ll level with you straight away.
A honey super isn’t for brood.
The clue is in the name. A honey super is a box that you put on top of the brood box of a beehive so that your bees can store honey in it.
So, if you were to use a honey super as a brood box, you’d only be able to fit one layer of frames in there, which is not enough to contain a healthy bee colony.
If you’re thinking that you could just stack two honey supers together, with the queen excluder sandwiched between them, then that would mean your hive would be 50% brood and 50% honey. That’s not a healthy balance.
The way that beehives usually work is that you have one brood box, where the queen lays her eggs, which then hatch into larvae, which then turn into bees. This is where your colony lives. You can add more brood boxes as your colony grows, and for wintering too, but usually you’d only need one brood box to last the whole year.
Above the brood box, you’d have one or two honey supers, which is where your bees store the surplus honey that they’ve collected.
If you’re just starting out with beekeeping, then you’ll only need one brood box, which you can add a honey super above when the time comes for it.
Any more than that, and you’ll be getting more honey than you can handle from your hive, which is a problem you probably wouldn’t mind having.