Top Entrance and Escape Boards?

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I will be going with a few top entrance hives this summer.  Just wondering about harvesting down the road.  How to get the full honey supers off the hive when you have a top entrance? 

- I don't want to use a blower - sounds rough on the bees.
- I don't want to brush each frame off - sounds like too much work.
- I don't want to use fume boards - I've heard that the taste of the fumigant can get into the honey.

That leaves me with "abandonment" ("C.C. Miller's favorite method", according to Michael Bush's site), or escape boards.

And so to my question!  How do escape boards work on a top entrance hive?  I figure I could put shims on the underside of the escape board to provide a middle "top" entrance under the supers, and either ventilate the escape board and close the top of the supers entirely, or put a second escape board on top under another top entrance at the top, so the bees can leave at both ends of the honey super stack.

I want the bees out of the supers while still leaving an entranc eto the rest of the hive without creating a heat trap in the honey supers.  Anyone?

Thanks!
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[bassman1977]

I don't want to use fume boards - I've heard that the taste of the fumigant can get into the honey.

I use a fume board every year and never had this issue.  It could be due to the length of time I keep it on too.  I use the fume board for about 15 minutes which will push the majority of the bees into the lower boxes.  I then put a bee escape on (the one that goes into the oval hole of the inner cover) and put the supers on top.  Leave for 24 hours and come back.  You'll have a few bees left over, but the majority of them will be out of the supers.  Shim the bottom of the inner cover.  This will  be their new entrance.  Seal make sure there are no cracks and openings from the inner cover on up so they can't get back in.  Typically all I need to do for that is put a heavy cinder block on top of the outer cover.  They'll still try to get in that way for a while because that's what they know.

[Michael Bush]

My prefered method is to wait for cool weather and pull the supers while the bees are down below.  But the other option, if you want to use escape boards, is to set one on a bottom board facing down (in other words the bees escape down) and a stack of supers I often from several hives on top of that and another escape board (set so they can escape up) on top of that.

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Thank you both.  I appreciate it.  :)

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