Crazy comb

1168 Views 4 Replies 3 Participants Last post by tonysea, Jul 22, 2014

paddab

Discussion Starter · Jul 22, 2014

1st year beekeeper,
while doing a inspection of my hive we came a cross one of the boxes that 2 weeks earlier we install 8 new frames with wax foundation below a med box with 7 out Of 8 frames of honey. They were building comb both horizontally and vertical all attached. With the horizontal comb secured to the box below. We removed all the frames and most of the comb and install new frames with wax foundation again, should we have done something different? We stopped feeding 2 weeks ago when we installed new frames. Should we have still been feeding 1:1 to help them build out the foundation ?
Really not sure,

2nd question,
On our other hive we installation queen excluder 2 weeks ago and while inspecting on Sunday we found a lot of dead bees on the excluder ? This seemed really strange or is it normal ?

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tonysea

· #2 · Jul 22, 2014

I'm not sure of your configuration with the medium, nor do I see foundation? Sounds that you have bee space issues, and what on earth is that foil looking stuff in the bottom of that box? This is just my two cents, as this is a first year hive take that queen excluder and throw it as far as you can, towards the trash cans if possible. Best of luck. Tony

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Michael Bush

· #3 · Jul 22, 2014

Push the combs into the frames straight. If you have to cut them loose and rubber band them back in. I'm expecting someone to look at the pictures and not catch that you were using foundation and rant about foundationless... but you were using foundation...

>On our other hive we installation queen excluder 2 weeks ago and while inspecting on Sunday we found a lot of dead bees on the excluder ?

If you have supers on and no top entrance and you put an excluder on, the drones will be trapped above it and will die in the supers while trying to get out. I think everyone who has used an excluder has made this mistake. The right thing to do is leave a top entrance for the drones to get out either by exposing the notch in the inner cover if there is one, or by propping the cover enough that they can get out.