Bearding every afternoon

My bees are very healthy. I have 3 brood boxes on plus my honey super flow frames. It is not very hot and they are bearding every afternoon.

I took 4 jars of honey already. Is this normal?

Hello and welcome to the Flow forum :blush:

My first question is have you inspected the hive recently? Swarm preparations can look like bearding. Any queen cells in the brood boxes?

Secondly, when did you harvest the honey? Was it in the last day or so? If you had a big leak back into the hive, the bees will beard for several days or more.

If there are no queen cells and no honey leak, you may want to consider installing a slatted rack. You can buy them from Mann Lake bee supplies, or you can make one. Use the magnifying glass search tool at the top of this page to look for more information about slatted racks on this forum. I love them for preventing bearding, and my bees seem to like them too! :wink:

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Thank you! We did a hive inspection a week ago. No queen cells. But there is a lot of honey. The state inspector told me to take some of those frames out. I just ordered the slatted rack.

Yes I had a big tray of honey from leaking down through the hive. They all go back in overnight.

Hi and welcome, and congrats on your harvest! :blush::cherry_blossom::honeybee:

Did the inspector mean to harvest those frames? Or remove?

Since you seem to have had significant leakage, do check the forum search for tips on how to avoid that. The biggest one is never to open a whole frame at once - do it in a slow succession of fifth or quarter sections at a time by only inserting the key that amount. Another help is to use two keys together to lessen the chance of twisting the frame as you open it.

Great you ordered a slatted rack, I love them and theyre a standard part of all my hives. They will not only help with bees cooling and hangout area, they enable bees to make full use of frames for brood, and buffer from wind entering the hive in chilly places like yours and mine!

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