Honey in the brood box

[mushmushi]

Hi.

I was wondering how many of you extract the honey contained in brood boxes ?

My bees decided to fill their second deep instead of building the remaining 7 frames (out of 10) in the medium box.

I could let them have their honey, but I would rather not since they might get dysentery (winters are long here).

Cheers

[caticind]

Why do you think they would get dysentery from their own honey??

[BeeMaster2]

I'm asking the same question.
Jim

[mikecva]

They are filling the second deep so they will have stores for winter. If both boxes do not have 50-80 lbs of honey but empty frames outside of the brood area, you can take your honey and give it back to the bees in the outer frames of the brood boxes to make up the amount the bees will need. Then remove all other boxes above your brood boxes.  -Mike

[mushmushi]

Why do you think they would get dysentery from their own honey??

The bees are inside their hive for 5-6 months. Depending on the winter, they may or may not many have cleansing flights.

Late Summer/Fall honey is more rich than sucrose so there is an increased risk of them getting diarrhea.

At least, that's what I remember reading.

They have done a test here: have an apiary fed with sucrose the other with their own honey. The ones fed with sucrose had less diarrhea.

[boca]

It is not the fresh and pure honey which makes the bees sick.
The common cause of dysentery is fermented honey or syrup.
How to avoid fermentation.
1. All the stores have to be capped, otherwise moisture goes into the cells and dilute the honey.
2. The honey should not crystallize or only slightly. When the sugar goes into solid state the remaining solution is thin, not enough to prevent the activity of yeasts and bacteria. There is difference between honey and honey. Some of them practically does not crystallises (black locust) others quite quickly (sunflower). The worst is honey dew especially willow honey dew. High fructose content is good to delay crystallisation.

Since we don't always know what kind of honey is in the combs, it is safer to give white sugar (sucrose) for winter. The bees use their enzymes to invert it (split into glucose and fructose) if they have enough time.

[Finski]

.
You put honey frames over the excluder and wait that bees emerge.

Then give pollen frames all to broobox that bees rear winter bees.

[Michael Bush]

I try to leave them nothing but honey if I can.  They will get dysentary in a long winter no matter what they eat, but it's usually caused by pollen (and brood rearing), not honey and honey will help prevent Nosema.  Nosema lives much better at the pH of sugar than at the pH of honey.  My goal is to have no sugar syrup in the hive if can do so without a risk of them starving.

As far as the quality if the honey, the issue is whether you use treatments or not... and whether it's likely to be sugar syrup anyway because of feeding when "the honey supers are off".