My old hive that swarmed

[annette]

My old hive that swarmed about 1 month ago. I checked this hive today and found many many little baby bees and most of the combs were empty. Guess all the brood finally popped out.

About 1 month ago they had an entire super filled with honey (from last winter  ) and so I added another honey super underneath that one. Today when I looked, they had eaten some of the honey, and placed lots and lots of pollen  in with the honey.

My question is can I take that honey and extract it even though it has a mixture of pollen in with it?

My next question is should I leave some of this old honey for the bees since they are bringing in new nectar and pollen?

This old honey may or may not be fermented as I detect an off odor. I really want to get this old honey off the hive and figure out what kind of honey this is.  But this super seems to be the only significant store of honey they have as they have not started to fill the new super I placed on there 10 days ago and the rest of the hive is empty comb mixed with pollen everywhere  (I have not gotten into the bottom brood super on this hive either, as I did not want to disturb the brood super as we had sort of a cool day - will check this bottom super next week for the new queen and/or eggs)

Thank you for all the help you can give as this forum is really all I have right now for help.
Annette

[tig]

some of the frames i extract honey from have pollen.  i have no problem with the honey extracted from those frames.

if the honey has a slightly fermented smell, i would use a fork  and scratch out the cappings and let the bees clean out that honey.

[annette]

So I would open up the cappings of honey and just leave the super in place on the hive as is??? They will eat it,or just recap the honey??  I am not sure if this honey is truly fermented, as I do not see any bubbles, just uneven surface of how they capped the honey and this honey was old from last winter. There was a lot of mildew in this hive a few months ago,  so I am just assuming that this is fermented honey.

Thank you so much for the help.
Annette

[Kirk-o]

I would let them be Bee's are pretty smart they take care of things check them in a couple of weeks
kirko

[tig]

if the honey is capped it wont just spoil.  i'd leave it then and let the bees work it out.

[annette]

Thank you all for the help.

I will just leave the super on the hive and maybe just extract a few frames for me.

Sincerely
annette from beautiful Placerville California. Had cooler weather here this week, but by tomorrow should be in the mid 70's. I will be happy for the bees this week.