Honey-geddon!
I inspected yesterday and I got my learning experience for the week that ended up with the recovery of 6.5 lbs of honey and comb.
Last week I had taken a frame out of each box and nadired a third box, leaving the fame 12 space in all three boxes empty. I didn’t make any dummy boards for the space. This was good advice, except it didn’t work for my bees. Now, absolutely no hard feelings! It was an interesting learning experience!
So, yesterday I show up at the apiary, get the kit out, open the hive and the crown board is a bit more stuck than expected... and when I get it off, a comb - filling the gap 3 boxes deep - collapses into the bottom of the hive! The top 3rd was capped honey, the middle open honey & nectar and the very bottom freshly drawn wax.
The little ladies had completely filled the empty space with one giant comb!
I recovered a small Tupperware’s worth of honey and comb at this point, but it was becoming clear that I needed to take different and decisive action. Not only was there this huge collapsed comb on the bottom of the hive, but building it had thrown off the comb in the frames at the open end of the lower two boxes. The bees were deconstructing the drawn frames there to make room for this new huge wild comb and they were rebuilding the frames with cross comb. That needed to be rectified. I also felt that if they were able to build this huge piece of wild comb in one week, simply removing it would mean they’d build it again by next Saturday.
I needed something to hold the recovered honey, I needed to realign the cross comb and I needed to fill that gap.
So, I throw the hive back together and rush back home, grab two large Sainsbury’s bags for life and saw up some dummy boards from some scrap plywood I have hanging abound.
With three dummy boards for the current set up, and one extra for luck, and - ignoring the nasty bleeding cut on my hand from where the saw jumped and tried take off my thumb - I’m back at the apiary opening the hive again.
I didn’t get the chance to do a real inspection at all. At this point the association elders were drinking tea and trying not to laugh too hard while I was close enough to hear. They were going to lock up soon so I needed to get a move on. I did see lots of brood, but didn’t see the queen nor really look for eggs and larva. I was able to recover all of the dropped comb that had folded over and on top of itself like a collapsing banner. I was also able to save most of the bees that were folded into it. I cut out the sections of cross comb that were being redrawn to accommodate the wild comb and put everything back together. Luckily the cross combs were all honey.
Now, to be fair, the association folks were fairly interested in my set up and even took some photos of the massive bearding going on. We discussed all mediums and no QE and my choice to go foundationless. I got a thumbs up and pat on the back for trying something different, which was great. They all pitched in at the end to help me button up and make sure all the bees were happy. Then went back to finish their tea as I extricated bees from the recovered comb.
When I got home, I had about 6.5 lbs of honey and wax.
I’ve saved 3 small containers of cut comb honey and the rest I'm doing crush and strain with, using an old pillowcase I put through the rinse cycle about 6 times to make sure there was no soap products left in it.
I had ordered 2 new boxes and frames from Thornes last weekend, but they have not arrived yet. The bottom box is still only half drawn, but the colony is rammed. Every frame in the bottom box was covered in bearding bees. The frames in the top two boxes were covered with workers. They could use the extra space, as a super in the very least.
Next week I’ll have to go back and make sure we have a queen... all this activity made me nervous about her well-being. Now, I didn’t see any sign of the queen in the wreckage, but still... I’ll be happy when I see her happy and laying.
Running "Foundationless All Mediums with No Queen Excluder". Each box is national spec, but 190mm deep.