[Guest]

I got my first hive a few months ago. When i was going through it, i found the plastic strips that were probably used for controling mites. The hive had a shallow super that was, and still is full of honey. The hive had not any attention for i know 2-years, at least. Do you think this honey is safe for human consumption?

 

[ronnyclif]

From what I have read about check mite strips they must be removed before honey flow. I would not take the chance or get a bad name for selling contaminated honey.

 

[Michael Bush]

They are probably Apistan strips. I would leave the honey for feed. The bees have to eat too.

 

[Alex Cantacuzene]

Hi, Here is another tack on this. Yesterday I had to move my older hive onto another stand. Two deeps one medium super. We did not take everything apart and did not find the queen. The second super is full with honey, the crescent on the frames is nice and light, the inner pattern is dark, full and capped with flat caps. To mee it looks like all honey. The lower brood super has evidence of brood although we did not take it apart. What do we have here? This hive is in its second year and is not as energetic as my other one that is six months old.
Thanks, take care and have fun.

 

[Michael Bush]

>Yesterday I had to move my older hive onto another stand. Two deeps one medium super. We did not take everything apart and did not find the queen. The second super is full with honey, the crescent on the frames is nice and light, the inner pattern is dark, full and capped with flat caps. To mee it looks like all honey.

If they are shiny, I would agree. Color isn't really the indicator, the texture and shape of the caps is.

>The lower brood super has evidence of brood although we did not take it apart. What do we have here?

Assuming you don't have an excluder it would be less confusing if you just refered to medium and deep boxes. You keep calling them supers and it is a bit confusing.

What is "evidence of brood"? Is there brood? Open brood? Eggs?

>This hive is in its second year and is not as energetic as my other one that is six months old.

That often happens. Some blame it on the age of the queen, which may contribute, but sometimes a swarm with an old queen takes off faster than an established hive with a brand new queen.

Sometimes it's hard to know what motivates bees. Some think depriving them of stores will motivate them to work harder, and they think that is the reason a swarm works so hard.

 

[Alex Cantacuzene]

Thanks for the info MB. The caps are flat and are not shiny. The evidence of brood in the lower deep is that we found open brood that was also in the burr comb that we pulled apart when pulling some frames from the upper medium. We could see more when looking down between the frames. Right now I will leave them alone as they seem to have become much more active since the move. We plan to extract in about another week from the other hive and then will look at them again.Thanks for the tips.

 

[Alex Cantacuzene]

Once more, the word should be "deep" instead of medium as the hive is two deep and one medium right now.