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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Chris Cramer <chris.cramer AT gmail.com>, ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Comb under the hive?
  • Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2017 10:07:40 -0400

Chris,

Aren't honey bees interesting? They'll do all sorts of creative things.

I would treat this comb as I would a regular cut-out. Carefully cut off each comb with brood from the top. When you come across the queen, safely set her aside. An empty matchbox makes a great impromptu queen cage -- leave it slightly cracked open and the workers can service the queen inside.

Lay the comb within an EMPTY frame (no foundation). Trim the edges as needed to make it fit. Wrap a few rubber bands vertically around the frame to hold the comb in place. Now put these frames in the hive.

The bees will attach the comb to the sides of the frames and will eventually chew through the rubber bands and remove them. This comb probably won't be stuff you'll want to keep -- it may be a bit wonky -- so keep an eye on them and one day, when it is empty of brood and stores, you can remove them and melt down the wax.

There are a millions ways to do this but what I've described has worked many times for me.

Let me know if you have questions.

Randall Austin


On 7/22/2017 9:41 AM, Chris Cramer wrote:
Hi Folks,

I could use some advice. I was recently doing a hive inspection and one hive
looks great, no problems there. The other hive was showing signs of not
having a queen, in particular, there’s at least one laying worker and lots of
spotty drone brood. I grabbed a frame of brood from my good hive and put it
in, in hopes that they would produce a queen. But then I noticed that what I
had thought was bearding under the screened bottom board was actually comb.
Today I got a slightly closer look at the comb and it appears to have brood
in a nice laying pattern.

My guess is that the queen fell out during an inspection and couldn’t get
back in, but the workers started building her comb on the underside of the
hive.

So now what? My thought is to remove the hive from the hive stand, put a
large bucket or container under the hive stand and give it a good thump on
the ground to knock all of the bees into the container, put them in the main
hive and sacrifice the brood that’s in the comb beneath the hive.

Alternatively, I could cut out the screened bottom board and staple it into a
box in the main hive and hope they sort things out, migrating back to the
frames when possible.

Thoughts? Any advice is appreciated

thanks
-chris
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