What We Do With Drawn Comb For The Spring

After we've pulled the capped frames from the hives and upcapped them, put them in the extractor to spin all the honey out, we put the "wet" frames out by the hives and let the bees clean them up.  They'll bring any honey we didn't get back to the hives to eat over the winter or put it in frames and cap it and we'll get it back in the fall when we harvest fall honey.  The "cleaned-up" frames still need to be dealt with though.

We want to make sure there are no eggs or larvae from wax moths or other bugs on the frame that will hatch and wreak havoc on the comb that the honeybees have worked so hard to draw out.  The reason why is that we'll put these frames back on the boxes this spring.  The frames get recycled and reused, you might say.  We want to make things easy on the bees.  If the bees don't have to draw out all the comb making wax to hold the nectar/honey, they'll use that energy to make honey.  That's what we want!  Efficiency.  Making the most of your resources.  Working smarter - not harder.

The way we make sure there are no eggs from wax moths or any small hive beetles or other creatures on the frames hiding in the comb is we stack the frames in the freezer for three days.  Three days below freezing will kill any opportunistic pests that may be hiding on the frames.  Here they are in the deep freeze.  It can only hold 10 frames at a time, so it takes a week or so to cycle through the frames.

Once out of the freezer, I put the frames back in the boxes and stack them criss-cross to dry out.  We'll leave them for a couple of days like this in our utility room.  We're quickly running out of space.  Had we known we'd be doing what we're doing (beekeeping, milking, etc.), we would have designed our home differently!  We might be in the market for a shed in the future.

Once we've ensured they are fully dry, we very gently put them in contractor bags.  We don't want to damage the drawn out comb, so the bees won't have to do a lot of repair.  In the spring, they'll clean out the cells and begin filling them with nectar.  The contractor bags are filled and we seal them up very tightly so that nothing can get in there.  Then we stack them in the garage out of the way.

They'll sit there safe and sound until the spring when the bees need additional honey supers.  At that point we'll pull these frames out, load them in honey supers and put them on top of each of the hives.  That's what a super is: a box of frames that sits on top (super) of the brood boxes separated by a queen excluder so that your honey supers contain exclusively honey - no brood.  Beekeeping is work, but it's rewarding and something that you always learn something new or a better way to do things.  Hopefully these frames will make it through the fall and winter and the bees will do their thing this spring and share their delicious, sweet honey with us!

The Flow Is On! - Checking in on the Bees

The flow in south Louisiana in our area is dependent primarily on the Chinese Tallow Tree.  The flow means that the tallow tree (and other plants) are producing lots of nectar.  The busy bees gather it, bring it back home and make delicious honey.  The tassels you see below are the flowers of the tallow tree from which the honeybees harvest nectar.

Here's an up close shot.  There were bees really working it, but I couldn't capture them as I was far away zooming in.

As semi-novice beekeepers, we've learned that when the flow is on, you don't want them to run out of room to put the nectar.  We check the boxes every week, adding honey supers to give them more space.  A super simply means a box placed on top. Here are our hives.  You'll notice that there are five.  Last week we had six.  I'll explain that in a minute.  Let's go through the boxes one by one.

The first box is a swarm we caught in the yard this spring.  You'll notice the brick is sideways.  That, in beekeeper language, means we could find no queen.  I did, however, find some larva, and that means there WAS a queen.  I'm going to give it one more week.  If I find no queen and no eggs, I will stack this deep on top of a healthy hive and they'll be able to use the nectar in these frames.

This second box is a swarm we caught this spring.  It's blowing and going.  In fact, I added a honey super to the super that was already there, because the first super was about 80% full of capped honey.  One thing you'll note is there are 2 deep boxes.  The reason for that is that one of the splits that we made failed.  No queen and no eggs.  I stacked the deep on top of the existing deep and put the queen excluder so that the queen won't go up into the honey supers.

The third hive is VERY active.  I added another honey super on top of the four honey supers already on there that are full.  We're really happy with this one!

This is the sad story we were telling you about.  One of the splits that we made, although initially successful, failed.  Rather than lose the nectar, we moved the deep box with the bees and put it on top of the second hives' deep box.  They'll use all that.

The fourth hive is doing well.  I didn't add a honey super to the top of the three existing supers as the top one wasn't quite full.  We'll check again this week.  One thing to think about when adding supers is this:  When we pulled honey last July, we put the supers with drawn comb in the freezer.  Using supers with drawn comb gives the bees a head start.  If they don't have to draw out the wax, they spend more of their energy making honey.  Supers with foundation only (meaning no drawn comb) requires the bees to build out the honey comb first before making honey.

The last hive is the swarm we caught at the farm.  These are "mean" bees.  When you pull the lid off, they are in your face, angry.  It is important to always wear your bee suit.  The good thing is that mean bees make more honey.  We added a new honey super to the top as the one beneath it was almost full.  This super was a new one with foundation only - no drawn comb.  It will take them a while to build out the comb.  They have about a month and a week before we pull honey.

Temperatures are in the 90's already and it is humid.  Even though ventilated, it is hot inside a bee suit.  Handling the boxes with angry bees flying around is tricky.  Honey is heavy!  A medium super with ten frames full of capped honey weighs about 50 pounds and when they are stacked high, are hard to lift and maneuver.  When we pull honey in July when the flow is over, it will be a hard job, but there are fruits to the labor: Delicious, healthy, raw honey!