Honey Honey Honey Honey and more Honey

billdean · July 09, 2016, 11:39:58 PM

While doing a sugar shake test on one of my hives I noticed that the brood area is really getting full of honey. Where the brood emerged from they seem to be back filling them with honey. I run a 8 frame medium hive bodies. On the second hive body frames 1,2,3,4,7, and 8 are plum full of honey. There are eggs in frame 5 and 6. I don't feed or haven't in a couple of months or so. The 3rd brood box is the same way packed with a lot of honey. I have a super on this hive all so that they are filling with honey. I am not sure what to do if anything. I thought about taking all the honey frames out of each brood box and replacing them with bare foundation but that seems pretty disruptive to the colony. The other thing I was thinking was just to add another brood box with empty frames and put it as the # 1 box on the bottom board moving everything up. That way I would not be going into the brood nest. I don't have any extra drawn foundation. Has anyone ever experienced this before? What did you do?

BeeMaster2 · July 09, 2016, 11:58:24 PM

Why not just extract some honey from the third box and give the empty drawn combs back to the bees. If the bees want to make room in the brood nest, they will move the honey from the brood box into the empty frames.
Jim

MikeyN.C. · July 10, 2016, 09:20:07 AM

Last weekend, I found 1 of mine the sameway,2 ten deeps and a Med. That they have barely touched, top ten deep I could hardly lift. Jim I thought about spinning some, but the frames are not capped, guess I could feed it back to the bees. The state inspector is coming tomorrow, so I'll let you know what she says to do.

Acebird · July 10, 2016, 09:36:36 AM

What is your goal? If you are looking for honey do what Jim suggests. If you are looking for drawn frames checkerboard the full box of honey with foundation. I would stagger the two boxes of honey frames so one is not on top of the other but I don't know if it will make much difference.
Side note:
If your hive is all mediums and the second box is full of honey except for frame 5&6 that raises a red flag to me. It suggest to me that you did not get them to expand their brood nest a month or two ago or you did not get supers on fast enough. The worse scenario is they are in swarm prep. It would make a difference if the honey is capped as opposed to being nectar. They use nectar to swarm and not so much capped honey. The only way I would do something about the swarm possibility other then checkerboarding the honey is if I had someone with experience look in that hive. Can you get someone with experience to look at that hive?

BeeMaster2 · July 10, 2016, 09:55:31 AM

Mickie,
For the last 2 years I have been having trouble finding entire supers in capped. Last year I did not pull them.. This year I gave them a shake and if nothing came out, I pulled them. I tested the honey and found the capped honey at 16 1/2 to 17%. The uncapped honey was between 17 1/2 to 18%. I mixed it all together and it came out at 17 1/2%. The bees were in a dearth for at least a week before I pulled the honey.
If you know someone that you can borrow a Refractometer from, pull a frame and test it and see how low it is. If you only have a small amount and it it is below 18.5%, and you will use it in a few months I would pull it.
Hope this helps.
Jim

billdean · July 10, 2016, 10:53:16 AM

Quote from: sawdstmakr on July 09, 2016, 11:58:24 PM
Why not just extract some honey from the third box and give the empty drawn combs back to the bees. If the bees want to make room in the brood nest, they will move the honey from the brood box into the empty frames.
Jim

Jim........I would like to extract some of the honey but I do not have a extractor yet. The closes one I have found is 70 miles away. I did not think I would need one this year. I am going to try and order one Monday.

Quote from: Acebird on July 10, 2016, 09:36:36 AM
What is your goal? If you are looking for honey do what Jim suggests. If you are looking for drawn frames checkerboard the full box of honey with foundation. I would stagger the two boxes of honey frames so one is not on top of the other but I don't know if it will make much difference.
Side note:
If your hive is all mediums and the second box is full of honey except for frame 5&6 that raises a red flag to me. It suggest to me that you did not get them to expand their brood nest a month or two ago or you did not get supers on fast enough. The worse scenario is they are in swarm prep. It would make a difference if the honey is capped as opposed to being nectar. They use nectar to swarm and not so much capped honey. The only way I would do something about the swarm possibility other then checkerboarding the honey is if I had someone with experience look in that hive. Can you get someone with experience to look at that hive?

Acebird..............The comb they are filling had emerged all ready so it seems as if the brood nest was established. This hive I split a month and a half ago into 2 nucs. One nuc made a queen and one did not. I re-combined the 2 nucs into one hive again. They are bring honey in like crazy lately. A lot of the honey is capped but no means all of it. Checkerboarding seems to be the answer but again that will leave me with frames to extract. I could use all the comb that they can make. We have been in a good honey flow for a long time now. It does not seem to be slowing down any.

Quote from: MikeyN.C. on July 10, 2016, 09:20:07 AM
Last weekend, I found 1 of mine the sameway,2 ten deeps and a Med. That they have barely touched, top ten deep I could hardly lift. Jim I thought about spinning some, but the frames are not capped, guess I could feed it back to the bees. The state inspector is coming tomorrow, so I'll let you know what she says to do.

Mikey............please let us no what she says although I really can't see many more options for me.

Acebird · July 10, 2016, 07:39:30 PM

You don't really need an extractor to extract. You can scrap off the caps with a hive tool and flip the frame upside down and just let it drain. Yes it is slow but what is your hurry? You could scrap almost all the cell off if you wanted to. That would be like scrap and drain instead of crush and strain. I wouldn't be that aggressive.
So this hive was split and then recombined and at this point you feel the hive is queen right?

billdean · July 10, 2016, 09:31:33 PM

Quote from: Acebird on July 10, 2016, 07:39:30 PM
You don't really need an extractor to extract. You can scrap off the caps with a hive tool and flip the frame upside down and just let it drain. Yes it is slow but what is your hurry? You could scrap almost all the cell off if you wanted to. That would be like scrap and drain instead of crush and strain. I wouldn't be that aggressive.
So this hive was split and then recombined and at this point you feel the hive is queen right?

Yes the hive is queen right.

Michael Bush · July 11, 2016, 02:18:37 PM

>Yes it is slow but what is your hurry?

I did it once and waited a week. Nothing drained...

jimichu · July 11, 2016, 04:24:06 PM

I wish I have your trouble, my only hive is nowhere near filling up the honey supper I put on two weeks ago. I have two deeps and one medium, started in May, first deep is mostly full, second deep is 70% full, the medium is just empty, I can see bees police the medium and sealing the cracks of the box, but no honey coming in. I'm in LA.

Acebird · July 11, 2016, 09:16:37 PM

Quote from: Michael Bush on July 11, 2016, 02:18:37 PM
I did it once and waited a week. Nothing drained...

I have heard you say this before ... what was the temperature of the honey when you tried this? I warmed mine to about 110 degrees.

BeeMaster2 · July 11, 2016, 09:59:50 PM

Ace,
When your take your honey to temps over 104 degrees you are killing the antibiotic bacteria.
Jim

PhilK · July 12, 2016, 02:53:12 AM

Quote from: sawdstmakr on July 11, 2016, 09:59:50 PM
Ace,
When your take your honey to temps over 104 degrees you are killing the antibiotic bacteria.
Jim

Jim bacteria can't live in honey, it is too hypertonic for them. Heat can destroy the enzymes found in honey, but there's no bacteria living in honey.

Acebird · July 12, 2016, 08:31:41 AM

Yes Jim there is some damage to the enzymes above 104 I agree. I think you could get a lot of honey to drip out at a hundred degrees but it would take longer. Many people use heated capping knives that are way above 110, self included. Which is why I keep my capping honey separate from the extracted honey. I doubt most people do that.
My suggestion to billdean to warm the honey was to get empty comb without an extractor and preserve the comb for her immediate situation. I was not trying to convince her to not buy an extractor.

Michael Bush · July 12, 2016, 09:21:39 AM

> I warmed mine to about 110 degrees.

It was not 110 F... more like 80 F (room temperature when you don't have an AC)

MikeyN.C. · July 12, 2016, 09:19:52 PM

BillD, state inspector told me yesterday, that even though the 2nd ten deep only had the 2 1/2 frames with 4 an 5 day larvae and some capped, and the rest of the top ten full of necture( sugar water) and pollen,an their was 1 1/2 frames full of pollen. That there was plenty of room for her in bottom 10 deep, said that 5 frames in bottom was full of small eggs ( which I can't see). She also told me that she (queen) might have slowed down at the end of the nectar flow , she told me to pull the untouched med. Off top and feed a more water syrup instead off 1to 1, which I'm assuming that means the bees will have to spend more time evaporating water ? ? And want be able to back fill as fast, leaving more time for Queen to lay . but I'm sure my temp. humid. are different than yours.

Acebird · July 12, 2016, 09:26:22 PM

Quote from: Michael Bush on July 12, 2016, 09:21:39 AM
It was not 110 F... more like 80 F (room temperature when you don't have an AC)

Even in Upstate NY the attic is about 110 (room temperature) although it might be warmer because we are getting a lot more sun then we normally do right now.