I have two deeps that I reversed at the end of April, so there was more room in the "bottom deep" for egg-laying. I have recently "reversed the deeps" to their original state, and on my first check, have noticed a lot of frames are "black" in color, and there are fewer bees than I thought would be present. I have checked again, after a week, and the colony is rebuilding (it appears to be slowly) but the bees are clustered on the outside frames of the bottom deep, with almost no bees in the centre of the hive (where the 'black' combs are located...
Should I replace these frames with new foundation?
Should I replace all the 'black comb", frames, with new foundation?
What caused the comb to go black, in the first place?
Any advice would be more than welcome...
Thanking you in Advance,
binglis
The comb is only black because it gets the most traffic from bees dragging in pollen. It is normal.
Comb darkens as it is used for brood, each hatching leaves a cacoon behind that makes the comb look darker. Foot traffic over the comb also tends to darken the comb. It sounds as if the brood has hatched from the darker frames and the bees have graviated to the side of the hive the queen is currently on. As the hive builds up the bees will expand their areas of operation to cover the dark comb again.
This is a situation that suggests that a package or swarm my have swarmed itself. Or, superceded its queen. Either action sets the hive back to the point of pretty much being a new swarm and starting over. What else did you notice in the hive during your inspection?
Brood combs all turn black. It is their normal color after a couple of generations of cocoons and a lot of traffic.