Water in cells

Cindi · March 04, 2007, 09:35:33 AM

I am asking a question on behalf of BeeC, one of our members here.

He PM'd me and asked a question, he does not have internet again until Monday, must be some kind of system problem or something. I want to phone him later to tell him some thoughts on this.

He said that he opened his hives to insert a board that he had made to reduce the size of the brood box to keep the bees warmer. He saw a frame of honey still capped. He also saw on the other end a frame full of what he indicates is water, not capped honey and had some mould on it. He said that he was sure that he had capped honey in the boxes on both ends. He is very concerned and I want to alleviate his worried mind. It is so hard for the new beekeeper (like me), when you come across something strange in the hive and it gives to a frightened mind.

What is he seeing. It sounds like maybe the bees have been storing water would be my guess. We have had lots of fairly decent weather for the bees to get out now and then. We have had some very warm days where the bees are flying like crazy.

It is 5:30 A.M. the temperature is +5 celsius, 41 degrees F. The full mooon is shining in the low western horizon, beautiful. indicators of a sun shiny day coming on.

I have noticed over my years of weather watching, that generally when the moon shines full, we always have clear weather. I know that I can plan events in my life that involve the non-rainy days, so I always plan these important things when I know the moon is full. It is almost 100% positive. This is years and years of simply my own observations. I am sure there is lots of scientific research data to support this. Interesting and wonderful.

All have a great and wonderful day. Spring is almost here. We have now 12 hours of good daylight. 6:30 A.M. to 6:30 P.M. give or take the dawn and the dusk. Cindi

Kirk-o · March 04, 2007, 11:04:18 AM

I think maybe he has moister in the hive .Maybe when the weather warms up he can put them were they can get a little more sun in the winter
kirko

Michael Bush · March 04, 2007, 11:32:45 AM

I'd tend to think it's condensation and his hive is slightly tipped to that side. The condensation ran over and dripped on the comb and much of it ran in the cells.

Brian D. Bray · March 07, 2007, 10:36:07 PM

I would have to agree with MB. A hive with one side higher than the other can defeat several methods of venting moisture to the outside of the hive. A SBB would allow the water to run down the wall of the lower side of the hive and vent out that way. The mold is due to the water retained in the comb cells as the water dripped from the top to the bottom. Level the hive side to side, make sure it is slilghtly higher in the back and install a SBB if you don't have one yet.

BEE C · March 08, 2007, 05:57:50 AM

Hey thanks for the replies,
No thanks to dell. I just did my first real spring inspection and found the cause I think. The hives both have SBB but no open bottom. The entrances were 8mm or slightly bigger, probably not big enough. The entrances were two per hive on either side of the bottom board at the front of the hive. The mould was not as bad as I expected but pollen frames on the outside edge of frames, coincidentally? directly above the entrances. One particularly bad frame was the one blocked entrance, which also had a slight slant down to it. So while the hives were slanted so that the back of the hive was higher to vent through the top entrance in the inner cover, I think the moisture droplets tended to run to that side, as you said Michael and Bryan. The hive hut is on the highest point in the yard, which gets the most sunlight kirko but to help them out, I cut back some trees that had to be cut away from the electric fence anyway. The picture is of the one bad outside frame. Mostly mouldy pollen, but i cringe to think It may have had some uncapped cells. The bees were busy cleaning it so I don't know if they were uncapping the honey or if it had some uncapped when I put it in...

Cindi · March 08, 2007, 10:06:36 AM

Steve, when I checked the colonies briefly on that sunny day, I saw mould on one outside frame too. I think that the best thing is to just cut it out. I will be doing that as soon as we get a break in the rainy weather, hopefully today. Cindi

Billy The Beekeeper · March 08, 2007, 10:09:02 AM

Yea im gonna to have to agree with MB also :) :mrgreen:

Brian D. Bray · March 10, 2007, 06:18:56 PM

The bees will clean up the mold. Move the frame closer to the center of the hive and scratch the molded area with an uncapping fork. They will clean it up in a few days. To them it's just normal house cleaning--spring cleaning.

Cindi · March 11, 2007, 11:13:32 AM

Brian, that is good thought. Although I would be more inclined to remove the mould. Don't know why, I think that I like to give the bees a little extra help, probably not needed, but nevertheless, if I were to go into the hive anyways to move the frame over, I would just remove the fluffy stuff. Best of the good day. Cindi

BEE C · March 11, 2007, 10:13:13 PM

Thanks for the replies,
I scraped the mould off down to the foundation, it was mostly on pollen. I took out the frame and froze it. The other side was good so once they are stronger and getting low on stores I may feed it back to them. I replaced the frame with a solid cedar frame wall. I also opened up the entrances a bit the other day.