[johng]

Anyone have any ideas what the bees are working in the spring that makes really yellow wax. I know Brazilian pepper and Golden Rod will make yellow wax but, neither one of those are blooming right now. I have never saw so much yellow wax in the spring as we have right now. Most of our spring wax is almost pure white. I have noticed some yellow type of clover is really doing good this year, I'm thinking it might be coming that.

 

[Michael Bush]

Funny, but wax turns yellow no matter what color pollen they are working. According to Huber it is something they paint the wax with that changes it from that putty like consistency to a tougher, stronger consistency. Sometimes you can actually see the line where they stopped working on it--yellow on one side and white on the other, sometimes even in the middle of a cell.

 

[brooksbeefarm]

What Michael said makes sense, i took some(15 new) hives to a new outyard last year in July, they built up fast three of them made me a med. super each of honey and all of them made enough for winter stores. The comb was a bright yellow, well when i extracted it to sell and tasted it, at first it tasted good and then i started getting an awful bitter taste. Well i didn't sell it (still have it in a 5 gallon. bucket,) I took a frame to our club meeting and a member said all of his fall honey every year is like that and said it was from bitter weed, that blooms in the fall.It is a yellow flower and i just thought they made the wax from it.

 

[johng]

Yes, some of the frames where yellow on one side and regular on the other side. It is defiantly coming from something different they are working this spring. I've never saw it in the spring time before, I've saw it many times in the fall. Whatever it is must be pretty good cause they are filling up frames!

 

[wcubed]

They make yellow wax from the dark nectar of redbud. Redbud is just coming in here, and I would expect it to be past there. Do you know when the yellow wax started?

Walt

 

[Vance G]

If it is a plant variety, it grows here in zone 3 as well! I tend to agree that it is something applied to the wax by the bees. On the other hand, it does come about dandelion time and I thing they are as close to universal as you can find. I have seen them growing as weeds over 11000 feet in the Northern Rocky Mountains and they grow well in Florida too don't they?

 

[johng]

I noticed it yesterday as I was putting nucs in customers boxes. So it would have came in over the past month. It was not in there when I inspected to make sure the queens mated. Yes, the Red buds have finished blooming now. Our main flow will be starting soon from Gallberry. March can be a pretty lean month for us during dry years but, this year we have had plenty of rain and the bees have been wide open since early March. So this yellow wax is unusual I'm not complaining. I only had to feed these nucs about 1/2gallon of syrup and they were slam full of bees yesterday.