Clumsy bees?

[ShaneJ]

I have noticed since putting a SBB on my hive that the tray beneath has lots of little droppings of what appears to be wax. Would this be little balls of wax the bees have accidentally dropped? If so, if there was a solid bottom would they retrieve this wax and reuse it?
Now that I think about it a bit more, could it be from the caps of brood cells and when the bees hatch out they chew through and drop the wax?

[T Beek]

You're likely seeing wax and dropped pollen bits and maybe some bee parts and mites (look closely w/ a magnifier).  Does Australia have small hive beetles?  Whatever you're seeing, If they dropped it, it is unlikely they will reuse it.

thomas

[ShaneJ]

Unfortunately we have SHB bad. Its definitely wax I am seeing. I put an empty tray under my hive this morning and late this afternoon there was enough to roll into a small ball.

[T Beek]

Spring has just begun by you, right?  Its not uncommon to see bits of wax on the bottom as your bees should be making wax, drawing out new comb right about now in preparation for brood laying and honey/pollen stores.  

On a quiet morning put your ear right next to your hives, sometimes you can actually hear them chewing and forming the new wax.  It can get quite loud sometimes, loud enough to hear from several feet away (my hearing is better than my eyesite ;) Sounds kinda like crumbling paper.

thomas

[ShaneJ]

My eye site is better than my hearing and my eye site isn't that good  :(

Its a few weeks away from summer here. The queen is working hard currently producing lots of workers. This is why I started thing that maybe the little droppings are from bees chewing their way out of the cells.

[Scadsobees]

They do drop wax.
I usually see several different kinds of stuff on the bb - in a healthy hive
new clear wax flakes that they haven't processed yet,
bits of wax,
bits of cappings,
small white balls of sugar if they get into some old honey,
pollen (which can be white, black, yellow, blue, red, basically any color but mostly yellow).

They don't reuse wax such as that as a general rule.

If you do have SHB, they will rip into the comb in order to get to the shb larvae in the comb.  They can destroy significant amount of comb in a short time to get to that larvae.  You may want to keep a close eye on them, if the larvae gets into the capped brood, you may soon have a big problem on your hands.  If the hive seems happy and healthy it probably isn't a problem, but if they start acting weird.... And if you have combs in there that are getting torn down, then there's a problem too.

I have SHB in my area but haven't had any problems in my honey hives.  Just in my observation hive.

[L Daxon]

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Here is a photo of lots of wax flakes building up under a newly hived package colony of mine last year.  Of course they were primed to build out foundation fast so they must have been dropping flakes in their haste.

Too bad, but they will not use the dropped stuff, I have been told.

[ShaneJ]

Thanks for sharing that picture Linda, that's exactly what the tray under my hive looks like.

[ShaneJ]

Hey guys,

Last night I put a tray under my trap box and left it open just a tad to leave the bees out that were underneath. Early this morning I went over to add some oil and close it up and I noticed and I am 100% positive that bees were in the tray rolling up the bits of white waxy stuff and taking off with it. I am not sure however if they were taking it in the hive or taking it away to dump. It was interesting though.

[Country Heart]

Love all the observation notes, there is so much to be learned just by watching.