Safe Re-Installation of Honey-Bee Combs!!

Hey everyone, sounds silly and this ultimately was my fault but in hindsight what an amazing and inspirational 'error' this turned out to be.

When attracting swarms of bees in season we use a combination of feral comb, honey and what my partner calls 'magic sauce.

20181027_192537.jpg

20181027_191738.jpg

When we have spare feral comb from all our honey-bee rescue missions we add feral comb to the hives along with the 'magic sauce' this works incredibly well at times we get a new swarm of bees moving in literally hours later, what a treat.

20181027_191743.jpg

20181027_191810.jpg

On this particular day however I made a mistake. Around two months back I put 6 frames into this hive and got side-tracked. My plan was to put all ten frames in the hive and bait for the bees. The problem arose when nature decided it had other plans and been far smarter than I, a whole massive swarm of bees moved into this hive before I could put all ten frames in.

20181027_191747.jpg

(Below we have new honey comb filled up with capped brood comb at the bottom the brownish combs and at the top virgin mature capped 'storage honey')

20181027_195542.jpg

The plan was to let them settle in for a day or two and then add the extra 4 frames. Been so busy with our 23 other hives/swarms I clean forgot until a few weeks later. We then opened this hive to super up, and saw massive cones hanging from the roof....

20181027_191756.jpg

I am totally in awe of nature. Just because I forgot to put an extra 4 frames in the hive, that does not mean the bees did. They simply carried on regardless building their combs from the roof of the hive...

20181027_191814.jpg

This would not have been too much of an issue had we not wanted honey. However in order to retrieve honey we need to super up and put the lid ontop of the brooder box, so the combs needed to be removed safely and re-installed into the brooder frames and that is just what I did..

,20181027_192528.jpg

After gently sucking off all the bees with our super bee sucker featured often here, I gently removed the combs (larvae, eggs, pollen and honey included) and with rubber bands fastened to the brooder frames. This technique I have used often with great success, Within a few hours the bees carry on regardless and don't even know what happened other than their 'mansion' has a little renovation!

20181027_194022.jpg

20181027_194018.jpg

20181027_194035.jpg

20181027_194014.jpg

This is what the hive looked like inside before re-installing the new frames with their combs installed. The two frames on the right the bees were working, so adding the other few was done with ease and little disruption.

20181027_194039.jpg

Mission successfully accomplished, the hive now has ten frames in the brooder box. I then added a 10 frame super for the bees to start working and making some delicious honey for us to harvest in about 6 weeks from now.

Be sure to stay tuned for more of my epic bee-keeping adventures.

Trust you have a super week.

Cheer$;)

Sort:  

looks like it took some cautious care to move those to frames.

Sure did brother, these 'bad boys' are like biological weapons and always need to be handled with care ;)

Hi @craigcryptoking!

Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 3.485 which ranks you at #6393 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 1390 places in the last three days (old rank 5003).

In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 490 contributions, your post is ranked at #248.

Evaluation of your UA score:
  • You're on the right track, try to gather more followers.
  • The readers appreciate your great work!
  • Try to improve on your user engagement! The more interesting interaction in the comments of your post, the better!

Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server

wow, that is truly amazing! Thank you for sharing your wild bee knowledge!

It's pretty impressive bud bees really are the most incredible species on Earth, they contribute more to life on Earth than any other species and are the most studied behind number 1, silly humans ;)

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.16
TRX 0.15
JST 0.028
BTC 59698.94
ETH 2303.28
USDT 1.00
SBD 2.51