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[givemeone]

Absolutely new to this site and to "bee keeping."  Tons of questions already.  Is that one word or two?  I'm thinking one..

First of all, we got a "nuc" with five frames of bees.  Had a bit of a "oh....Crap" moment when I opened up the box.  Expected fewer bees.   A lot fewer.

so...the frames aren't anything at all like my nice, new and pretty eastern pine frames that I just assembled.  Two are plastic, three are wooden.  They all look pretty rough.  One of the wooden frames has one  end of the top bar broken...not completely off, but you can't grab it by the end when lifting.  Now to the questions...

1.)  Now that these frames are in my hive, I'm worried that I'm stuck with them.  How do replace worn out/broken frames with new frames?

2.)  How long does your sugar water last (shelf life) after you make it?  Does refrigerating it make it last longer or should you only make enough for each feeding....however much that is. 

3.)  when inspecting your frames...what do you do with the bees?  If I try to remember what these frames looked like when I was putting them into the hive  (ok..I didn't look really close...i was a bit freaked out)they seemed to be completely covered with bees.  Seems like it would be pretty hard to see what's going on with all those bees .....????

4.)  How long should I give the bees to "settle in" before doing an actual inspection of the hive?

5.)  why does this dialog box have some weird dysfunctional "scroll" feature?

Thanks for any offering of help.

Doug

[jajtiii]

1. When you do your inspections, you can begin to move the broken frames out towards the edge of the hive by 1 slot every now and then. Unless it's an emergency, you do not want to put honey between two frames of brood. They should start to put brood is some of your frames, making it easier to swap one of your frames with the older frame and keep the brood intact. At some point, the frame will be empty of brood (either a frame of empty cells or maybe one with just a dozen or so capped brood) and you can move it into the honey frames and finally out of the box, replacing it with a frame of foundation. I would throw that thing in the freezer and use it next year (perhaps after you shore it up a bit, if the damage is really bad) in a swarm trap.

2. I do not know how long it lasts, but I definitely try to only make enough for what I need and refrigerate the rest. If I am feeding a bunch of hives/nuc's, I might make up  a huge batch and try to snag some room in the refrigerator for the spare, if the wife is not in a bad mood about my beekeeping stuff all over the place...

3. I was advised to go in and observe on a regular basis my first year. My mentor was adamant about this, as he believed that I needed to become comfortable with an inspection and also just experience what the bees were doing at a given time. The goal is to have a specific goal for your inspection each time, which for me was usually either checking how much capped brood they had, how much pollen they had, how much honey they had and/or if the queen was in there. This gives you a chance to identify the various things to look for (pollen, honey, eggs, larva, capped brood, drone cells and (unlikely in year 1 with a Nuc) queen cells.) You only need to find eggs to verify the existence of the queen, but you will find the queen now and again, which is key (I still have a horrible time finding her in my established hives) to learning how to spot that rascal when you really need to one of these days.

4. I was advised to check them after 1 week and every week thereafter until the main flow was up, then switch to twice a month. Again, this was to give me experience with the bees (just to prepare you, in case you have my experience, get ready to always be surprised - I do not believe I ever went in and found what I expected with these crazy insects!)

[AllenF]

You can move a broken frame to the outside (#1 or 10) spot and when they are not using it for brood, just honey, then change it out.  But if it is working for now, use that frame.  Bees don't care.  I have frames I broke unglueing them and have the worst field repairs, and they work.  And on the syrup for feeding, if the fridge is full, you can freeze.   But if the honey flow is on, they may not take much of your syrup. 

[MustbeeNuts]

If it was me I would let them build up a bit, once you have the hive body almost full look at the messed up frame, if the brood has hatched, just pull it shake the bees off and replace it with a new one. its empty anyway, or almost becasue the brood hatched out. Then just chuck it.

If its wax you could melt it. But at this stage of the game, throwing it away is probly the easiest and quickest.

[Kathyp]

the jitter in the dialog box is a glitch.  doesn't happen often but is quite annoying when it does.

[fish_stix]

You can buy frame repair parts from all the bee equip. suppliers. If it's just a frame end broken off, then order some frame fixers from Dadant, part number M00718, 23 cents each, get a dozen. Use small frame nails to tack them on (shake the bees off the frame first :-D).

[Michael Bush]

If you can piece it back together with some tine it's good enough.