Super for HDF nucs

01 · COMPATIBILITY

HDF is not a format, it is a material

The catalogue has HDF nucs in Dadant US, French Dadant Blatt, Layens and Langstroth: same material, different perimeter. This super exists in one version only, Langstroth, and sits on the five-frame nuc.

With any other format neither the length nor the width will match. And if you are ordering a lid at the same time, try the whole stack at home: the same format name does not guarantee that two parts from different production runs will seat together.

02 · WHEN TO ADD IT

Buying a few weeks before moving to a full hive

Its moment is spring, when a nuc gets going and it is not yet time to transfer it: it gives room for brood and stores and stops the colony preparing to swarm for want of space. It also keeps a colony in the small format longer than the nuc alone would allow.

03 · FINISH

It is budget material, and worth knowing

Like the rest of the HDF family, it is a cheap seasonal part, not a timber super for twenty years: the stapling shows and the odd edge can come tight. Assemble and close it at home — with its nuc and its lid — and ease anything that rubs: that quarter of an hour saves the fight of adjusting it with the colony open.

04 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It is the bare super ring: no frames, no nuc, no lid.