Picking the right super

Honey Super

There are 3 different sizes of supers in the US.

  • Deep super
  • Medium super
  • Shallow super

Apimaye USA currently only offers deep and medium supers for 10 frame hives and only the deep super for the 7 frame hive.

The Deep Super

Deep supers are the same boxes that are already included in your Apimaye bee hive set. Beekeepers choose deep supers for honey production or expanding their colony to third or forth story. The advantage of adding another deep super vs. a medium super would be the interchangeability of the frames. Since all your boxes would be using the same size frames, you can easily swap or relocate your frames between boxes.


The deep supers have a round hole in the front and have round adjustable entrance.

The Medium Super

Medium supers are 6-5/8" tall, that is 3" shorter than the 2 deep supers that are already included in your Apimaye bee hive set, therefore use a shorter frame. Beekeepers choose medium supers for honey production mainly because when filled with honey, they weigh about two thirds of a honey filled deep super. The weight difference can be up to 25 pounds between a deep and a medium super.

How to Use the Super

If you are looking for expanding your colony to the third or fourth level, you can just stack the boxes on top of each other. If you would like to use the super for honey production, you'd not want any brood on the frames. Therefore you should put a queen excluder below the  deep super you want to have only honey. This way the queen would be able to pass through the queen excluder and lay eggs on the frames dedicated for medium supers. Please note that any time you have the queen excluder between 2 boxes, you should be using the bottom slot for the latch when latching the two boxes together.

Since our beekeeping equipment is standard US Langstorth size, you can use our Apimaye medium supers on top of your wooden hives as well. Even though they would not be latched, they would sit securely on top of your existing wooden boxes.

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