Last summer when my bees were cut out of my barns I was advised to leave the excess comb (beyond what we tied-in) out for the bees to clean out. It created a honey riot with angry bees, drowning bees, hopelessly stuck to the honey-comb bees and (probably) every bee within flying distance fighting for chance at the spoils. I only put up with it for a day or so (being a newbie I had no idea what to expect or what was normal.) When I got fed up enough to pick up every scrap of it and stow it away out of the bees' reach, the bees began calming down and getting adjusted to their new digs. It helped that a few hours after I did this we had a heavy rain which washed away the last vestiges of it.
Wet supers after extraction are one thing, but full, oozing comb chunks are too much of good thing. Nearly a year later I am now feeding them the chunks, but inside the hive on top of the top bars. This keeps things under control and results in no robbing nonsense. I've just kept my winter feeding rim on and every few days I pop in a new chunk, retrieve the last one (and scrape off the burr comb they've built on it). If I was interested I suppose I could do a crush and strain and retrieve the honey, but I'd rather the bees had it and this is the easy way to get that done. I kept it stored in my freezer in huge disposable aluminum turkey roaster trays.
Enj.
Wet supers after extraction are one thing, but full, oozing comb chunks are too much of good thing. Nearly a year later I am now feeding them the chunks, but inside the hive on top of the top bars. This keeps things under control and results in no robbing nonsense. I've just kept my winter feeding rim on and every few days I pop in a new chunk, retrieve the last one (and scrape off the burr comb they've built on it). If I was interested I suppose I could do a crush and strain and retrieve the honey, but I'd rather the bees had it and this is the easy way to get that done. I kept it stored in my freezer in huge disposable aluminum turkey roaster trays.
Enj.
