Color of Comb

[Kris^]

I'm finishing my third year of beekeeping and am curious about the color of comb.  I have some comb that was drawn  in my first hive the the first year, and it has some pretty dark comb on plastic foundation, as one might expect.  However, over the next couple years, I split that hive and inserted newer frame in.  Now this year I added foundationless frames which had been drawn out fully.  The colony absconded 5 or 6 weeks ago.  When I disassembled the hive, the comb was black -- all of it, even the comb drawn this year, which I thought was very strange.  There were some dead cells of brood in the frames and they smelled kind of dry and dusty.  Not unpleasant, but "earthy" and not sweet.

Does this black new comb indicate some kind of disease problem?  My plan is to scrap this dark comb and recoat the plastic foundation (the black foundationless comb will just have to be scrapped, period).  Good plan?  I could boil the frames, too, if anyone thinks that would be indicated.

-- Kris

[buzzbee]

Could the hives gotten damp and mold formed after the bees absconded?

[Brian D. Bray]

Mold might be a culprit although mold doesn't always turn comb black.  There's other possibilities up to that the bees got into a source of nectar that had a high wood ash content such as flowers near a fire site.  Minute particiles of wood ash will cling to a bee like it were pollen.

All that said, I've found that using plastic foundation is enough to cause some bees to abscond when all others reason seem to be absent. I don't like the stuff.

Clean up your frames and boxes and get ready  to start over.  Proceed as if the hive had been diseased when restoring the equipment.