Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: newguy on April 21, 2007, 11:44:15 PM

Title: brown wax
Post by: newguy on April 21, 2007, 11:44:15 PM
i have one black plastic deep frame in one of my hives, it has chocolate brown wax which i thought was just because it is an old frame, but every two weeks i scrape large pieces of burr comb off this frame and it is always that same color.  is this typical of those black frames? the rest of the hives gets yellow wax.
Title: Re: brown wax
Post by: buzzbee on April 22, 2007, 08:01:06 AM
Brown wax usually comes with foot traffic of bees. This frame may be one they cross frequently when moving through the hive.
Put out a door mat and tell them to wipe their feet before entering! ;)
Title: Re: brown wax
Post by: Scadsobees on April 23, 2007, 09:49:07 AM
Sometimes they when they create combs, if they are in a hurry or before the "white-wax" stage, it appears that they will re-use old wax.  This will be brownish.

That's what I see in my hives.

Rick
Title: Re: brown wax
Post by: newguy on April 23, 2007, 01:02:45 PM
the foot traffic theory, im not buying it. it appears way to quickly and none of the other frames have even a slight browness to the wax. my guess would be they are either reusing or they are simply building to match the existing wax on that particular frame. maybe, who knows.
Title: Re: brown wax
Post by: pdmattox on April 23, 2007, 08:15:03 PM
Quote from: newguy on April 23, 2007, 01:02:45 PM
the foot traffic theory, im not buying it. it appears way to quickly and none of the other frames have even a slight browness to the wax. my guess would be they are either reusing or they are simply building to match the existing wax on that particular frame. maybe, who knows.

I don't think they are trying to color cordinate the wax building process.  :-D   Seriously they are probaly reusing the older wax.  Keep in mind that every brood cycle and the more foot traffic across the comb the darker it is and the smaller the cell size.
Title: Re: brown wax
Post by: newguy on April 23, 2007, 08:42:44 PM
i agree they probably are reusing old wax, however they are only putting it on the black plastic frame. none of the others have any of this color wax. i just thought it was interesting that it appears they are in fact "color coordinating".
Title: Re: brown wax
Post by: Brian D. Bray on April 25, 2007, 01:29:11 AM
Try some different colored frames or buy some decorative colored wax foundation from Mann Lake and see if they'll build you a rainbow.
Title: Re: brown wax
Post by: limyw on April 25, 2007, 11:30:34 AM
Do you all notice that these brown wax are mostly in small size, normally about 1-2 fingers size. And it would just stop there. So my hypotesis is bees build brown wax when food (syrup or nectar) is insufficient for them to produce large area white wax, so they use own resources (unknown to me) to build, but due to limited resources they have, the brown wax just remain small.