BBKA Forum

Raiding domestic appliances isn't just Patrick's penchant
I reclaimed a beautiful square of vinyl faced composite board from the top of a dryer.
Cut to size,framed the edges and there's another crownboard.
Merry Crownboard

Nice one Alfred!

As I didn’t have a gas burner, I needed something that generated quite a bit of heat to bulk melt wax. Our old washing machine was making ominous rumbling noises and when I took it apart the drum spider bearing mounting was badly cracked. As it was rivetted on not bolted and a new spider nearly the cost of a new machine, a new machine it was. An angle grinder gifted me the stainless steel drum.

On its back on three bricks, a few steamed out old brood combs and any old wood bits as fuel and a bbq grill over the “door” hole. An enamelled pot 1/4 full of rainwater sits on the opening, fill with wax then just keep feeding wax.

Take it off heat once all melted to ensure it doesn’t discolour, leave overnight to cool and then tip out a lovely great cheese of wax. Scrape off the crud and ready to go.

Fun and free

Today being another wet sleet and snow miserable day i decided to sort my stored supers out that where crammed tightly with drawn extracted frames ..the reason being i had five empty supers that where used as ekes to house the syrup feeders during Autumn..with using them for ekes i had to jam 45 drawn frames into a further 30 supers for safe keeping..i use 10 frames in wooden boxes that had 12 squeezed in and 9 frames in poly that where squeezed with 11 frames..
On getting through half of them putting the correct amount of frames in each box i spotted something i have never seen before in one of my stored supers..the dreaded WAX MOTH LARVAE .. some in sealed wax cocoons and some not..the super in question had previously had a Queen laying in it after she had squeezed through a faulty excluder..six frames in that box where destroyed and quickly thrown out of the greenhouse into the garden..
I treated all the boxes before storing with a sulpher burner so i have no idea how the little devils got into that box..maybe the sulpher burner did not work,,?.

However.. luckily for me i came up with a simple idea earlier on this year..and that idea was to place a sheet of tough plastic monoflex between each super when stacking them for storage..so instead of the full stack getting destroyed it was instead isolated to one super..

Here is a picture of the little devils which i believe to be lesser wax moth larvae due to their size..

Finally Vaped the four garden colonies so hopefully that is me done..

Steve 1972 wrote: ↑

24 Dec 2020, 17:22

On getting through half of them putting the correct amount of frames in each box i spotted something i have never seen before in one of my stored supers..the dreaded WAX MOTH LARVAE .. some in sealed wax cocoons and some not..the super in question had previously had a Queen laying in it after she had squeezed through a faulty excluder.

Aye, that's the little burgers... I have found from experience that they much prefer wax that has previously had larvea in it and will often leave dry supers alone.
Must check my stacks....they are all stored outside as I've had disasters in the past when stored in the relative warmth of an outbuilding.

I vaped Five colonies at my Alnwick site seven or more days ago...I checked the inspection boards yesterday and one of the five colonies had a mite drop of a massive two mites..the other four had a big fat zero..needless to say i will not be treating these five again until Autumn ..

I treated all my colonies with oxalic acid today. All colonies are alive. As you would expect with the usual variabilities of bees, levels of stores varied between surprisingly full and lighter than I would like.

One Abelo mini plus nuc had leaves which had been pulled inside - but no mouse present. However a WBC had a mouse nest on top of the brood box. It had pulled the foil off the celotex and used in it's nest-making with some leaves. The mouse scurried away across the grass.

"However.. luckily for me i came up with a simple idea earlier on this year..and that idea was to place a sheet of tough plastic monoflex between each super when stacking them for storage..so instead of the full stack getting destroyed it was instead isolated to one super.".

Agreed, it's a good idea to seperate boxes (I do it in threes using cardboard) which keeps them in one place at least.

Treated with oxalic, all alive so far. One of downsides of where I nadired with a couple of supers was that the clusters in some instances were down into the stack, which meant a bit of guesswork regarding trickling. Would obviously not be an issue if vaping.

Cool day so didn’t take lit smoker. Few of colonies quite lively and smoker would have been useful as it goes. Will I never learn?

Made a start on clearing the remaining wax from my heather frames.
Not a job I particularly enjoy.
At least with my workshop/garage being so cold the wax is nice and brittle and flies out of all the cracks and crevices.

Checked trays for varroa drops. Only one large colony has dropped anything....they may be fin or a trickle....or a vape if it warms up. Most hives (bar 2) nice and heavy, fondant added to the lighter ones.