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  • From: Lewis Cauble <lewis AT hivebody.com>
  • Cc: <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Neglected Hive
  • Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:26:10 -0500

I'd just get rid of the 2 (mostly) empty boxes downstairs and call it good. Sounds like they have 40 lbs of honey above the cluster. Tear the old black wax out of the frames that you are removing from downstairs and put it in the wax melter. Replace with new foundation and use those boxes to do a split or 2 in April. Put a new super on this old hive in the spring.

In the past I haven't used excluders. I haven't had too many problems with brood in the honey supers although without diligent summer management (not removing full supers) they do move up in to that food and abandon the downstairs. If you are going to roll laissez faire like this you might experiment with an excluder. In the spring you will have a deep and a medium. Put an excluder on top of that medium, then start stacking the supers on as needed. This should keep them downstairs but don't forget to take the excluder off in the fall. It worked well for me this season on a couple of hives that I knew were not going to get much summer time attention. Pulled the excess honey in early October and removed the queen excluder. Your milage may vary.

Lewis




On Nov 12, 2011, at 3:26 PM, Wilson Lamb wrote:

Well, I was hot and lazy this summer and did nothing for my hive except
check for activity occasionally. I've opened it today, with mixed results.

There are four boxes, three deep and one medium. the two deeps on the
bottom are nearly uninhabited. One has a total of one frame of honey and
one has almost none. the drawn comb is all dark gray, nearly black!

The deep above is nearly full of honey, hard to lift!
The medium on top is nearly full of honey also. There are a FEW larve, so
there must be a queen, but I didn't see her.
the bees are active, but there aren't a lot of them, althogh they fill most
of the beespace in the one deep and one medium boxes.

So what to do.
For some reason they don't like the two boxes with black comb, so I think I
have to put on another box with drawn comb, to give them some space. But
will they move into it?

Naturally I'm hoping I can feed them and keep them over the winter. Perhaps
I can harvest now and treat for mites. I saw only a couple of beetles, but
don't know about mites.

So what's the advice? Harvest the deep, harvest the shallow, harvest
nothing?

Is anyone else needing to extract soon? I'd hate to have to do it alone!

Is there anyone who would trade extracted honey for my frames? I can
imagine this if someone wanted to providse winter food??

I'm thinking of getting Don by, but would appreciate some input before I
bother him.

Lastly, is there anything with which I can treat now that will help
survival??

Thanks,
Wilson Lamb

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