old mice nests--

[toomanyhandles]

I was given a hive to go with my existing 2 (been at this all of 1.5 years now), it seems to be doing fine, but upon checking it out there is a mouse nest from last? winter in the bottom brood chamber. Took up about 3 frames or so, and not much activity around it.

I pulled it out and put in 3 frames of new foundation, I don't see much for debris remaining to clean out and this hive isn't the most docile, as it were, so by this time I decided to finish up later.

Is it likely the bees have cleaned out out everything that needs done by this time of year (barring disassembling the nest itself, which I just took care of) or should I put everything in a new bottom deep section and work to swap out all the brood frames left down there as they mature?

Thanks for thoughts-

[Ravenseye]

Welcome aboard.

If you've done a good job cleaning up the larger stuff that the bees can't deal with by themselves, they should take care of the rest. I inherited a box (not a hive, just a box) that the donor told me had mice in it for a couple of seasons. For some reason, the bees never touched the comb around that area. I use it to go over feeder pails now. So, keep an eye on things and see what happens but I think the odds are good that the bees will work it just fine.