antifreeze revisited

[rache]

at last week's inspection i noticed a few pupal cells that the bees had uncapped, maybe 8 or 10 total. this week i found more (not lots, but enough that i noticed them) as well as a number of cells containing what i have to assume is antifreeze (i can't think of anything else that color...)

observations: the antifreeze was only in brood-containing frames, not in any of the outer honey frames. the uncapped cells appeared (i won't say for 100% sure, i may have missed a few) to be confined to the frames which also had the antifreeze.

is it reasonable to think that the bees fed some of this stuff to the larvae, and are now in the process of culling the ones they fed it to? (the vast majority of cells on these frames contained healthy-looking brood cells, and we watched several healthy-looking bees emerge on these frames.)

i'm worried about what's going on in there, and i also don't know of an easy way to fix it; if it were all confined to a single frame or two, i would consider just pulling them and replacing them with new foundation. but because they're spread out, i don't see that as a reasonable option.

any thoughts? can i just leave the bees to sort out the mess?

[Dick Allen]

>a number of cells containing what i have to assume is antifreeze (i can't think of anything else that color...)

purple loosestrife produces a green colored honey. I sometimes see a few scattered cells with green colored honey every year about mid way through the honey flow. FWIW.

[Nick Noyes]

I would agree with Dick it's probably loostrife honey.

[Kris^]

Would this green honey be bright, almost a flourescent yellowish-green? I found the better part of a frame of this honey in the brood nest of one of the hives in the squash field. It looked like anti-freeze, but when I poked it with a twig, it was much thicker -- as thick as honey. And also, the bees were working with it, and didn't seem to be affected like one would think they would be messing around with a poisonous compound.

[rache]

yes, it was - much brighter and more neon-colored than what i would've expected for honey, even a green honey like dick describes (in fact, i have seen other cells with a golden-green liquid inside, much more along the lines of what "green honey" suggests to me. this stuff was totally different.)

i continue to see a few cells here and there containing the bright stuff, and i continue to see a few pupae uncapped, but it doesn't seem to be developing into a problem, so for now i'm just keeping an eye on things and letting the bees sort it out.