I have a 3 frame flow super - I have two fully capped frames in it and just noticed that the honey appearance has changed in the rear window- there are little white blobs in it- they look like wax really but I’m thinking it is perhaps about to crystallize?
I will harvest the presently- hopefully this process is starting at the edges where it’s coldest. My honey has been very thick (16% water or less) and slow to flow. I wonder how long this harvest will take…
Certainly looks like it. Looks that in traditional frames too, so you idea to harvest ASAP is a fabulous one. 
I’d be taking the frames inside and harvesting over the sink… I’ve harvested a couple of frames at about 15-16% and it takes a LOOOOONG time. Can’t imagine your warm winter is going to help any 
(you’re in SA from memory??)
Yep- sa. Lots of sunny days lately but reasonably cold at night (3-6 C)- bees are bringing in mountains of pollen and very active all day.
I’ll probably harvest over 6 or more hours in situ if there on the warmest day this week.
BTW: the two frames above are 98% capped even though the end cells are not filled and the other is iver 50% despite showing nothing in the end cells
Are these used Flow frames (previously harvested)?
Do you have enough honey to get your bees through the winter Michelle? From memory, I think you had other supers on your hive. The preferrable solution would be to harvest what liquid honey is left in your Flow frames and either remove the frames and clean with warm water or leave for the bees to clean them up and hope they remove all the honey crystals for you, though this is never guaranteed.
No- this is the first time these frames have filled- they’ve never been harvested yet.
@Rodderick this hive consists of two 5 frame Nuc boxes as the brood nest- with the three frame flow super on top. There is quite a bit of honey in the brood boxes- at least 4 frames fully capped at a guess. Plus the bees are super active every day bringing in loads of pollen and hopefully some nectar. If anything I am a little worried there may be a bit too much honey in the brood boxes.
So you have plenty of stores thats good, I would empty the flow frames and watch over the coming weeks (4-6) to see what the bees are doing with the sugar particles left behind. Seeing that we are in Winter now, you may find the bees may clean them up and move the honey down into the brood box or consume it if there is not enough nectar coming in. Scribbly gums are flowering in Sydney at the moment and I have noticed that Stringybark is budding up nicely so fingers crossed as it has not been much of a season this year.
G’day Jack, don’t be concerned about bees having too much honey in the brood box. The bees put it there while constricting the brood to keep them going through the winter. As soon as spring appears, they’ll empty what honey is left out of the cells they want to use while expanding the brood again.
I’m not too worried jeff 
I just had that experience with the queenless hive which was also originally in one of these new Nuc box stacked hives where when I transferred it to the long hive I found of ten brood frames 7 were completely capped honey- and the other 3 brood frames were also 50% honey. That was the hive where the queen disappeared shortly thereafter. In that case the requeening has been a 100% success and now it is interesting to see the colour of the bees changing to the golden ones. over the last week every day I see more and more of the pale bees- and all the orginal dark bees must be over 6 weeks old now so I expect they will quite rapidly be replaced over the next few weeks until the entire hive is golden Italian bees.
G’day Jack, that’ll be nice to see. I’m half tempted to order in some nice golden bees myself. I picked up a colony yesterday that built a nest in the open under a palm frond. They are the same color as mine. I’m sure they’ll be happier, nice & snug in a hive.
The bloke next door suspected they came out of his hive. He told me to look out for a white spotted queen. This queen was unmarked. The beekeeper invited me to pick them up because he didn’t want them. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him that I sold bee colonies:)
good on you Jeff! another colony under your belt. I hope next spring to nab, catch, split as many colonies as I can this year.
If you do decide to try out the golden bees- I can definitely recommend Mulder Apiaries:
http://www.mulderapiaries.com.au/
The queen was the cheapest with post I ever saw - and they had one for me when everyone else seemingly didn’t. It arrived in good order and set to laying very perfect frames of brood within days of her release. It’s really nice to have a different type of bee- to me they look exotic and very pretty. They seem to carry larger loads of pollen than my darker bees average too. My brother has Italians and his hive has been very docile, and was reasonably productive in its first season. I can’t wait for spring now- to see how they do. I have high hopes for this coming season after very deep and rare soaking rains earlier this year and late last year. There is talk of large gum flowerings for several years as a real possibility.
Do bees tend to go darker as they replace their own queens - you know, if you don’t buy a nice Italian one? For instance if Jack loses that Italian queen to a swarm and can’t get it back, will the subsequent bees become darker with each queen that the hive makes? If so, why? Thanks.
I guess if the local bees are mostly dark- then the successive queens will breed with local drones and over time the light genes will be bred out?
