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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #4264  by Adam Bee
 25 Jul 2019, 22:21
I’d suspect that it’s not the end of the world, but you’ll have to clear wild comb and perhaps harvest wild honey.

For an example, I left a gap in my hive and the bees filled it in a week with one large wild comb full of honey.

I have a 35 mm eke on my top box and half the frames are shorter. They fill that gap with hanging comb that connects the bottom of these frames in the top box to the top of the frames in the next box. This they fill with honey and it breaks with every inspection.

They clean that up, but it’s also a waste of resources spending the bee-power moving the honey and rebuilding that darned brace comb each time. (I really need to move those DN4’s!)

Could be amusing to leave it there, but probably just a waste of the bees’ resources.
 #4265  by Japey Edge
 25 Jul 2019, 22:43
Cheers Adam,

Unless I wake up real early tomorrow I'll have to do it in the evening. Should be good. It'll be an experience whatever happens :lol:
 #4266  by Japey Edge
 26 Jul 2019, 07:08
Woke up early, so went out and took out frame and two shallow boxes. Replaced CB and roof.

Took queen from apidea and placed in queenless colony. She got a lot of attention. I didn't stick about.

Now to get the apidea frames into shallow frames and shake the box out. Maybe in a few days time.
 #4267  by NigelP
 26 Jul 2019, 08:11
Bet I was up even earlier...LOL...took the last three hives to the heather,. Just starting to pink up nicely, but a lot of damaged plants due to heather beetle. We need some rain, it's pretty dry up there...and boy was it warm this morning,,,
 #4279  by AdamD
 26 Jul 2019, 16:55
On Wednesday I poured out the contents of my wellies after looking at some colonies. 35 degrees.
 #4280  by AdamD
 26 Jul 2019, 17:09
Wednesday:-
Nuc 8 Well, I thought that a pretty ripe queencell in a de-queened nuc would be fine. Even if bees started to produce queencells, the small size of the colony would not result in a swarm; the queen would ensure that the younger queens would be destroyed. Unfortunately not so in this case. She went with a large number of the bees leaving a queencell from an unwanted queen in there.
Certainly, the bees have done as I wanted on the odd occasion before in a small colony with one queen killing the other queens in their cells.
But how many book say "leave two queencells" in a large colony and the bees will fight it out! Not so!

Nuc 6 Opened a small nuc to find almost no bees in the box but a frame of brood that had been put in previously. On it just 1/2 dozen eggs as the new queen had just started to lay. The reason why there were few bees - there was no need to work to keep the brood warm so they could go out and forage as it was warm enough already as the outside temperature was 35 degrees! As a sanity check later in the day, the bees were back and the queen was there too.

A mini-nuc. A just laying queen flew off when I picked her up. This box doesn't have a queen excluder over the entrance to keep the queen from absconding so I wanted to clip her. Thankfully she was back by the evening.
 #4281  by AdamD
 26 Jul 2019, 17:11
Adam Bee wrote:
25 Jul 2019, 22:21
I
I have a 35 mm eke on my top box and half the frames are shorter. They fill that gap with hanging comb that connects the bottom of these frames in the top box to the top of the frames in the next box. This they fill with honey and it breaks with every inspection.

Could you place a block of wood or something there until you remove the DN4's and can take the eke out?
 #4283  by Japey Edge
 26 Jul 2019, 18:32
Did you get your rain Nigel? Been tipping it down in Newcastle and Ferryhill. Tomorrow is supposed to be pretty wet too!
How's it looking at the Heather? Are they filling supers up as quick as you'd like/expect?

Adam,
Sounds like you had some fun. How many hives and nucs do you have in total? If you don't mind me asking
 #4289  by NigelP
 27 Jul 2019, 17:20
Japey Edge wrote:
26 Jul 2019, 18:32
Did you get your rain Nigel? Been tipping it down in Newcastle and Ferryhill.
Oh yes in spades, today's market was a literal washout...but our unofficial motto is "Open all weathers"...so we stayed until 2 PM.
No idea on heather wouldn't expect anything but a trickle for the next week then there will a 2 week period when it goes mad and then slowly slows down (we hope). The rain will help....but now we need the weather we had last week...
Saltburn-on-sea food festival tomorrow, forecast is cool but little rain.
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