Extracting honey with pollen

NCNate · May 20, 2021, 09:43:56 PM

I have a couple hives that decided to backfill the brood areas with nectar instead of drawing more comb in the supers. I use double deeps for brood and add supers on top as needed. No QE. Of course, this is causing swarming issues. One of the hives has 2 empty supers with new foundation and they refuse to draw it out. I added an upper entrance last weekend. If that doesn't work I'm going to put a super on the bottom on Saturday.
I plan on extracting any capped honey I find in the brood nest this weekend to give them room and figure they have plenty of time to replace what they need for winter storage. On my check last weekend I noticed random cells full of pollen surrounded by capped honey. What's the best way to get the honey without the pollen? Do I need to scoop it out before extracting? I doubt it will stay in the cells when the frames are spun.
Ideas?
Thanks

BeeMaster2 · May 20, 2021, 10:02:44 PM

Nate,
If you use an extractor, the pollen will stay in the cells. If you crush and strain, you need to cut the pollen out or it will end up in the honey. It will change the taste and make it foggy.

You did not mention if you have a good flow on. In order for the bees to draw comb, they need to have more nectar coming in than they have space to place it. When bees keep their honey stomachs full their wax production goes into high gear. This is why swarms are massive comb builders.
Jim Altmiller

NCNate · May 21, 2021, 08:14:22 AM

Thanks Jim. Definitely have had good honey flows going on as the other 2 hives are working as normal. The main hive I'm concerned with pulls comb in the brood chamber but just refuses to move up. I found queen cells early in the season and made a split by removing 4 frames and replacing with foundation. They pulled those fine and rapidly filled them before again beginning to backfill the brood areas. 2 weeks later (last weekend) I lost a swarm and there were 4 more queen cells. I made another split leaving 2 of the almost capped cells to allow them to finish making another queen. I also added the upper entrances.
They have yet to pull 1 complete frame of comb in a super while my other 2 hives (started last year) have each drawn out 2 supers completely and started on a 3rd.
Maybe the new queen will help, but she will have the same genetics of the old so I'm not sure.
If they haven't began working the super hard on tomorrow's check I'll probably place it on the bottom until it gets drawn and then move it up. I'll also give them drawn comb from whatever I can extract. After that I'm out of ideas...

BeeMaster2 · May 21, 2021, 09:30:52 AM

What did you do with the frames that you pulled?
Try putting them in the super. Bees have to decide to move up and fill an empty super. By putting 2 drawn frames in the super, it tells the bees that they have decided to move up.
Jim Altmiller

NCNate · May 21, 2021, 10:31:15 AM

The frames I've pulled so far have all been deeps and used for a split. I should have some tomorrow that I can use to seed a super for them.
Thanks for the replies!

TheHoneyPump · May 21, 2021, 11:55:12 AM

Hi NCN,
Just reading through, and what mostly caught my eye is the content and context of your post #3 about recurrence of cells and not utilizing the space despite your efforts.
Imho, one if two things were going on. 1. The hive may be wanting to supercede a poor or failing queen, hence the cells. Or 2. The genetics may be undesirable. (Not all bees are the same.)
If the hive performed well previously, like last year, then sure let them requeen themselves if you have the patience.
If you do not have such history on it and they have been misbehaving from the get go; then stop spending time and resources on misfits. Take control of the situation and requeen on your terms. Meaning promptly, like today, kill the queen, kill all cells, and kill the virgins. Recombine all those splits into one. Buy and install a new queen of known source and genetics.
We need more bees that take care of themselves and behave themselves. A hive that regularly requires a lot of beekeeper attentions and manipulations simply should not be promoted. Hives needing such should be requeened, from a reputable queen supplier with desirable traits. We do not requeen only mean hives. We requeen just as many, many more, crappy hives.
You may have one hive requiring that much attention. Consider the compounding efforts if you had 100, 1000, 5000 hives like that. Goals become unattainable and the situation completely unacceptable very quickly.
I hope that helps with your considerations of what to do.
As a suggestion, you do not need to figure out how to extract honey/pollen mixed frames. You do not need to fix the frames or fix the hive space. You need to fix the bees.

Oldbeavo · May 21, 2021, 08:54:18 PM

To me the guts of it is you don't have enough bees in this hive'
HP is correct, a new queen will hopefully change the situation, lay more eggs and or better foraging bees.
Even if you get a new queen you could add some brood from your good hives to give it a quick boost, while your good hives will replace the brood quickly given the new space if the honey flow is on.
Alot of our requeening is for poor producing hives, have a queen, brood, some honey and also sometimes reasonable bees numbers, but just aren't gathering enough honey compared to the rest of the apiary.
Sometimes a nuc. is used, new queen plus some brood to give the hive a quick boost.

NCNate · May 21, 2021, 09:48:52 PM

Thanks all. The old queen left with the swarm. Hopefully whichever one of the 2 capped cells in there made it will be a better queen. She should have hatched and be back laying by this weekend.
The hive was overcrowded for a double deep before the swarm, but not if they were using the 2 supers. After the swarm it looked like a normal hive.
I'll get it worked out. This is what keeps beekeeping interesting!