Hello fellow keepers,
My question today is very particular. I got a nuc in April, (5 frames), placed them into my brood box, and by late May my queen had doubled the population, and 9/10 frames were full of brood, bread, pollen, & honey. The exception was a middle frame, from the original nuc, in which she hasn’t laid many new eggs. There seems to be old capped brood that I’m not sure ever hatched, and the comb is very, very dark, holes are small. I know this old comb has become too small for her to lay in, and that workers reared in it couldn’t develop normally anyway, but my question is: When I remove it, do I take it away completely and let the larvae that are in there perish, and rob the colony of all the resources inside it? I’m not sure how you’d place it on top of the super with a Flow Hive, to let the bees gather what they want to from it. My super is nearly full, but could I harvest one and place the old frame in its place?
Thank you!
Hello and welcome to the Flow forum! 
It is normal practice to rotate out old brood frames, and there are several ways to do it. Before I go there, I would like to ask you a question. Do you have one brood box or two? In your local area (Fresno) there are likely long nectar dearths, and most hobby beekeepers would fill two brood boxes before putting a super on. If you only have one, and the nectar flow is over, no big deal, you will just need to be prepared to feed the colony over winter.
To address your question a little more directly, I usually remove the super about this time of year, as most of the nectar flow is done for now. If you leave it on, bees will put propolis on it when the weather cools and any remaining honey may crystallize. That will make big problems for harvesting next year. So I would harvest any capped Flow frames, no more than 1-2 frames per day, and put the old brood frame in the gap left by one Flow frame, above the queen excluder. Make sure that the queen isn’t on it before you do that! 
Put a new frame with fresh foundation in the gap in the brood box. Any capped brood shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks to emerge, and after that you can remove the old frame and render it for wax or discard and replace the foundation etc. Once the super is empty, take it off and freeze the plastic frames for ~48 hours prior to storing them for next year.
Hope that helps. If anything isn’t clear, please ask more questions
Hi Samantha,
Following on from Dawns advice, my experience with alternating conventional frames in the flow super has been detrimental at best, mainly because once you remove one of the flow frames it opens the areas that naturally allow light gaps. My Bees decided to chew the internal parts of my hive as a consequence. It was actually a pretty interesting occurance because you can actually hear them going at it. Quite nerve racking in all honesty 
. They were literally chewing a top entrance to my hive. Thankfully i was able to stop it by plasterng tape over the light gaps.
I would consider all aspects before you make your choice, a good idea is to allow time to pass with your brood frame in question, keep on inspecting your colony and switch it out when you see the frame holding barely anything. Older frames typically are a primary brood frame so sometimes patience can be key. Slowly moving the frame aside from the centre of the box will get the Bees to utilise it for either Bee Bread or even honey storage. Maybe eventually as time pass a spare frame. Waiting until your brood cluster retracts and you naturally possess empty frames is a good time to switch old frames for new.
I know it sounds like im countering @Dawn_SD advice, im not and in fact attempting to give you a clear picture from from another perspective, before you commit to an action understanding possibilities is indeed key.
I wish you and your Bees all the best.
Regards
Scol
I agree with @Scolarious, another option is to move the old brood frame from the middle to the outer edge of the brood box, maybe 1 or 2 frames in from the wall. The bees like the brood nest to be clustered together, so if you move the frame to the edge, they will “repurpose” it from nursery to pantry.
Hi, & welcome Samantha. The one thing that I want to address is what you said about the brood in the old frame “I’m not sure ever hatched”. If the brood didn’t emerge (hatch) on time, it will certainly die, causing a foul odor. The holes in old comb will never be too small for the queen to lay eggs in, especially if it started out as standard foundation. Standard foundation is larger than what the bees build in the wild. If the queen isn’t laying eggs in that comb, it is simply because the colony hasn’t prepared the cells for her to lay in. You could be mistaking capped honey for capped brood. What I would do is scrape the caps off, before placing it on the outside as @Dawn_SD & @Scolarious suggested.
A photo of that frame would be helpful.
A genuine question is how long can Samantha say that she has noticed this particular Brood generation to be present in the frame?
If it is indeed a case where there is a genuine problem, it Would be enough cause for me to pull the frame and dispose of it.
I back up @JeffH request for a photo reference to help further.
Thank you @Dawn_SD! That’s very helpful! So, two new questions now that I’ve learned a little more. What happens to the honey in the Flow frames that wasn’t capped and fit for harvesting if I remove the super now, or soon? And also, if I remove the super and set it aside for a few hours, will all the bees move over to the hive and abandon it? Currently during hive checks, both sides of each frame are shoulder to shoulder workers, and I can’t even wrap my head around where they would go. Should I attempt to shake them into the brood box below?
I did just buy another super, with the intent of allowing the bees to decide whether they wanted it to be for brood or honey, or whatever. Is this not a good time to task them with that?
Thank you, sorry for the all-over questions. I do go to my first bee keepers meeting next week, and will learn more there too.
Thank you! I’ll get a photo of it in a day or two when I go back in. If I’m correct, this brood has been there since I received the nuc in April. Maybe I’m mistaken because the only aroma inside the hive is that of honey, and a slightly fermented smell like you notice when driving in wine country.
You can harvest it cautiously on the hive, but it can be prone to leaking into the hive, which the bees do not enjoy. I harvest it off the hive in my kitchen over a large sheet pan to catch honey drips. I have a honey refractometer (about $20 from Amazon) which can be used to test ripeness. If it is 18% water or less, it will be shelf stable. If not, I freeze it and either use it quickly, or feed it back to the bees when they need feeding in the fall and winter.
They might if you do it in the evening, but I would try to shake off as many as you can first. Beware that open boxes of honey will attract robber bees though, so don’t leave it out there for more than an hour or two.
If your hive is really packed with bees, the new super would give them somewhere to go once the Flow super is off. As the population reduces heading into fall and winter, you can then remove the super if necessary, to help them keep warm etc. If they haven’t worked the new super much, it would be a good idea to remove it once the colony has shrunk a bit. They may not work it much at this time of year, but it won’t hurt them to try it, if the hive is very strong right now.
You’re welcome Samantha. No, that wont be brood if it’s been there since April. Worker bees emerge after 21 days from when the egg is laid, drones, 24 days. Maybe the brood did emerge at the appropriate time, before it got replaced with new brood. On a black comb, the dark color can show through with the cappings, giving it an old appearance, which can be mistaken for cappings that haven’t opened for a long time.
I would be concerned about a slightly fermented smell. Has honey fermented in the bottom tray?
Oh gosh that might be it and would make so much sense. I’d looked up disease that can be present in colonies that might look like what I’m seeing, except that the worker numbers are tremendous and the hive so healthy and abundant, that I’d lean toward disease not being present.