Bees cleaning flow frames after removing super

Not one frame, the whole super, including the box.

The concept is this:
Anything above an almost solid roof (for bees this is the inner cover/crown board), is considered to be outside the hive and valuable contents need to be brought down into the brood area. Valuable contents will include honey, unripe honey, pollen and bee bread, propolis, but not wax (usually). Anything else is left behind, for a while…

After more than a week or so, bees seem to adopt the new roof space (at least in my colonies) as part of the hive. So if I use this method for cleaning supers, I only do it for 2-3 days, then the super comes off the hive and goes into storage.

Hope that helps :blush:

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yes it does. Thanks. yeah I would think after more than three days you’d be in danger of the queen getting up there and laying? So- Do they really clean out all those frames in 2-3 days?

I leave the queen excluder on, under the crown board. Curious workers still get up there, but there is no danger of the queen being in the super (assuming the excluder is intact).

It depends on the state of the brood box and the local nectar flow. If the brood box has space, and there is almost no forage, yes, they move it all. If you have a strong fall flow from ivy or other late blooming plants, you may not get them to empty it, but I still wouldn’t leave it on for more than 2-3 days. After that it goes into the freezer for 48 hours (to kill off wax moth and SHB eggs), then gets wrapped in burlap and stored in the garage for next season.

:wink:

Very helpful. Thanks. That’s what I’m going to do for next season after I harvest the last time. I think these frames are too far gone at this point.

Maybe I missed something but how are they too far gone?

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Leave the Flow Frames in the open position this will buy even more time, as the bees can still crawl in and out between the cells, they are likely to do an even more thorough job to as they figure out what is going on with the misshapen comb. If left for too long in the open position the bees will try and build out the Flow Frames when they are in the open position, but it is likely to take them a week to figure out if the numbers are strong and a further week or two for them to start building comb on the surface, but even if they do build some comb, they will be a long way off filling them with honey.

Dead bees inside, and some mold.

Dead bees inside, and some mold on the surfaces

Thanks Kieran. But will bees clean mold?

Yes most of the time they will, unless it is damp then they might just avoid the area, but their little mandibles and claws work on a more minute scale then we can and they would clean them before using them. But they might also leave cleaning them to last if they have empty cells to fill before hand. There is another thread similar to this one, I just linked them here and now Ill link you there, as I posted another method of cleaning.

How did you go with cleaning these a couple of season back?

This last season I took my super and placed it (open) on a bottom base and put it down the driveway away from my hive. Every bee within miles came and picked it clean of honey in less than an hour. Had I not shaken them out and taken it and put it away, they would have also consumed/cleaned all of the wax off of the flowframes as well. (That I didn’t want) I highly recommend this method!

Ok yes bees can make short work of this when they are looking for resources.

There are two risky aspect of this practice though.

Open feeding can be quite risky in spreading disease, you think of a feral colony infected with AFB or with a high varroa count and this could result in the spread of disease, it is really an uncontrollable method, in some areas it can be a breach of beekeeping regulations too.

The other risk is that UV exposure can weaken the Flow Frames, and im not sure about on your end but that UV has been so strong lately, getting burnt to a crisp in about 25 minutes.

But it is a good observation though, one method of this that has worked in the past is leaving the Flow Frames open in the Flow Super while its still on top of the hive, the bees clean it back but i expect not quite as extensively.

Bees do work on such a minute scale. I cant think of a way of doing this with out the risks involved.

It seems a bit mad, but as the bees will start to rebuild Flow Frames out after a long time of them being left in the open position, as they rework the cells and try to make them work. Maybe if the Flow Super is added on upside down and in the open position, this would prevent the bees from actually being able to fill the Flow Frames at all and they might remove all of the wax thinking they can correct the comb back to the correct angle.

I never thought of the disease aspect as the whole process took less than one hour (and not in direct sunlight) I then took the frames and stored them in a box in the garage until next season. No bees on them= no varroa/disease…?

Varroa you would be able to spot on the frames if there were any, but its more that the bees rub against other bees from different colonies at the time of salvaging there is no way to really know. AFB spores would be on the bees in the same way and transferred over.

So the risk isn’t so much to the equipment but to the bees meeting up.

Good that it wasn’t in direct sunlight.

Not readily until there is a severe infestation.

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Hi Kieran,
I am reacting some time later, to your input about bees cleaning flow frames, and wish further clarification.
When you say to put the flow frames into the ‘open’ position, won’t this then just fill the trough at the base of the frames with overflowing honey as well as allow a constant drip/flow of honey into the brood box via the overflow valve?
I am trying to learn more about how to best remove honey from my flow frames in readiness for winter and in enabling bees to increase their winter stores, so I am grateful for your contribution and idea(s).
Thanks,
Simon

Hi Simon,

This cleaning process is really for excess wax that is resulting in issues with bees not filling the Flow Frames consistently or allowing the Flow Frames to open fully releasing all of the honey.

You would want to harvest first as much as you can and then leave the Flow Frames in the open position the bees uncap the cells after a harvest, and seeing that the cells no longer line up they generally start to remove a lot of the wax to figure out how they can make use of the space. If left long enough they can actually start to rebuild the Flow Frames to try and use the space, so it is best to remove them before they do this, albeit often times bees will also avoid Flow Frames that are in the open position after they clean off the wax.

There might be a slow trickle of residual honey into the honey trough, a slow trickle the bees will lap up through the small gap.

In regards to what you are wanting to do.

Are the Flow Frames not completely full or capped of yet, and you want to remove this and swap with a conventional box over winter?

You can leave the Flow Super on to fill and for the bees to feed off of the honey inside.

If you are wanting to harvest honey early, just to empty out the Flow Frames, consider where the honey is. If it is around the top edges of the Flow Frame similar to how the bees build around brood comb. Then there is a lot of empty space that the honey needs to go through the bees are going to be lapping this up as it moves down through the Flow Frames and it if it is quite runny being more of a nectar then it might move to quick with no capping to contain it, and leak out the sides of the comb.

Minimise impact by portioning the harvest 1/5th at a time if you notice major leaking you can stop harvesting any further.

I would then feed the nectar back to the bees to boost their winter stores.

If there is not a lot then you can remove the Flow Frames and clean them out in a laundry basin or bucket of hot water, let them soak in the open position after 5 minutes open and close them several times while submerged and then leave in open position when you lift them out so the water flushes through them. A rinse off to get rid of any honey/nectar residue, dry out of direct sunlight, then store in a sealed storage container or bag them up for next season.

Share pictures of what you are trying to work with.

Wonderful! Thanks for all these ideas and suggestions Kieran.
Cheers,
Simon

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