I’m worried about my bees. They have been chewing down the flow frames, not like previous pictures from other people which show cracks etc. but properly chewed down. This makes the surface of the flow frame wavier in gradient, much like natural honey comb can be. I’ve attached a (not very good quality) picture.
There are two brood boxes with one flow box on top. Last inspection a month and a half ago, they were cleaning honey out of flow frames, and honey bound in the brood boxes (I switched some of the brood frames out with clean frames). Now, the top box is completely empty. I’m not sure what to do… I don’t personally inspect the hives, the primary carer of the bees is on holidays until the end of January. There is a heatwave in Sydney at the moment, and I am concerned that perhaps they are reacting to a dearth. I fed them sugar syrup today. My other flow hive (1 brood box + flow frame box) are doing fantastically, I harvested a frame from them today. They are in the same backyard.
That is a bit long during the busy season. Ideal would be weekly. Minimum would be every 2 weeks. Hard to know what is up with hive with an inspection so long ago, but the Flow super does not look well-populated. Having said that, the cells look to have drawn wax, so the chewing may be of wax rather than the plastic, unless you have seen plastic bits thrown out of the front of the hive.
Is there any way you could get another beekeeper to take a look for you?
I can’t see anything from that picture sorry.
Can you post some more pic’s or hire a beekeeper to look at your hive if you can’t open it up?
When you say wavy - I wonder if you mean the offset frame height - which is the design. The bees actually normally build up the edges with wax so they are even. But maybe they are not strong enough to build up the Flow Frames yet.
This video shows a good comparison of 2 hives in the same area with different strength colonies:
Upon closer inspection… I think the bees have built the edges of their cells much higher then the other hive, then chewed that beeswax down in some areas, turns out I’m just unobservant rather than any actual serious issue thank goodness…
We did a walk away split a while ago and left the flow frames on top as they were quite full still and wanted to make sure the split had plenty of resources. The split is really strong now but they cleaned so much wax back on some of the frames that they almost looked like new.
Very easy to think something is out of the ordinary.
