During the last inspection, the propolis was really everywhere. I separated two frames and a large splinter broke off of one and stuck to another. It isn’t a big deal, but eventually, I want to replace it. What technique would be recommended to replace a full frame that is damaged? I am a bit worried. I killed my queen doing mite treatment a month ago. I am heading into winter and it has already started getting down to frost temps at night. First year. Was going well until I treated them with formic acid. I got in to the hive yesterday. 3 weeks ago, I saw the new queen cell and I let them be for three weeks. Yesterday, I didn’t see capped brood, but some drone cells. They were really loud and a huge mob went out on the landing board when I was inspecting. I am really afraid of squashing the new queen (if I in fact have one) going into the winter. My gut says just leave them alone at this point. I have a double brood box set up (no super). The top box is really heavy and has a lot of capped honey. I am still seeing lots of pollen going in as we have a bloom of goldenrod going on right now.
hey Mark, we have all been there having nervousness about beekeeping. Since you are in an area that does have a bee club I would bet there are some other beekeepers you could get an extra pair of eyes and hands to help you with queen spotting and offer advice about your inspection technique before you toss in the towel on doing nothing. The broken frame should come out in spring and replaced with a fresh one, then you can recycle the wax off that one and discard it. You could even move that frame to your upper box and swap it out with an existing frame if that helps the bees move the resources out of it but I wouldn’t say that it will make much difference right now. I say its better to deal with it when they aren’t hunting for resources and get it out of use in the spring before the heavy season starts again in May.
Thanks. I figured we killed the queen, but my wife swears she happened to see her take off from the landing board one day after we treated them. My neighbor just showed me that he has a hive about 40 feet off the ground in the hollow of a tree in his back yard. He said he noticed it a few weeks ago. I am guessing we smoked her out with the formic acid and she started off on her own. It’s way too high up for me to check it out. I am going to have to get some binoculars to even see if they are honey bees.
Thanks Tim.
It got up to 70F today (low 50’s at night), so I decided to get in there and get a better look. The good news is that I did see capped brood and larva. Not a lot, like in the spring/summer, but definitely some. The bees were not happy, I used less smoke, to try to keep them from all exiting through the entrance during the inspection and I didn’t mess with the upper brood box. I went right into the area where they were all concentrated last time. Even since a few days ago, they added more comb to the one frame and there is a lot of honey. I think I am OK, but just paranoid.