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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