Good one Dawn, we all wish, eh… 
Had one of those days yesterday, got a phone call from a lady who asked if I could remove half the bees from her hive !! So I went to have a look. So the hive had not been opened for 4 years, 8 frame brood and a super. All 4 sides had a beard from top to bottom. Bent 2 hive tools trying to get the top off and after over an hour success with a shovel, by this time the hive was a little annoyed. Another hour to get to look at 4 frames in the super, tons of bur comb and bridging comb. Tidied up the 4 frames and the frame side of the ply-wood internal roof, I will have to use the shovel again to get that out. Decided to let the colony settle down and back there tomorrow for however long it takes.
Cheers
Amazing! After 4 years, in other countries, that hive would have been decimated by varroa.
Guess we gonna loose a few beekeepers if that mighty mite arrives here ever.
Hi Peter, I got to thinking about that hive. Is there a way you could move that hive a meter away, or even less? Then you could place another brood box containing frames of brood in it’s place. That way a lot of bees will leave the over populated hive & move into the new brood box, making it much easier the remove the remaining frames.
Actually just moving the hive just one box away & then rotating it 180deg would do the trick.
That is something I would do, cheers
@JeffH Went today and brought 8 frames home for 27 litres of light colored honey that tastes nice. Just finished tidying up and draining the last from the extractor. The wiring on the frames was really loose, maybe just tightened by hand I suspect. At any rate I am happy with the result. A couple of the combs seem to have collapsed and one was ‘repaired’ with solid wax. The added super greatly reduced the bearding issue and the new frames of foundation were covered with bees.
I will be taking the stickies back tomorrow and will talk to her about that idea, the lady was considerably calmer today - as was the bees, I think she may have been stung working in her garden. A few tubs of honey may win her over and I will let you know.
Cheers mate
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Well done Peter, that’s good news.
Me, I spent the day harvesting my crop of yacon & preparing some for the freezer. It will take me all day tomorrow to do the rest.
I had ordered a package thinking I would need to end the laying workers hives. I don’t know yet if those hives accepted their queens yet after shaking them out. So I am merging the package bees with a split figuring I could always split the split and start a new hive with them later. Kind of like leasing out the package bees.
I am keeping the queen that came with the package in the house giving her sweet water occasionally (she has attendants with her). I didn’t think I could keep the package bees alive for a week or two but you can a queen. So the bees are getting leased, could be a rent to own if the laying worker hives accept their queens. Otherwise I will end the laying workers and start a new hive.
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Took the stickies back and she told me she had 5 stings to her face and neck last Wednesday. That was why she wanted to be rid of half of them. She looked through binoculars with my super on and while I had the eight frames at home so basically an empty second box and the bees had room in the top box with new frames and foundation. She thought I had already taken half the bees as the bearding had reduced to almost gone.
When I got there at 10 there was a crowding at the entrance but no bearding, lots of workers in the top super, I did talk to her about a split but I couldn’t get her to the idea that there only appeared to be less bees as the hive had extra room.
I am sure she will agree to a split early Spring if not sooner as she said she has had swarms before at the end of August a few times but couldn’t get help to look after the hive. I had a better look at the garden and there is a spot a couple of metres away where a hive could be placed. She did ask if I would look after the hive for a couple of jars of honey, the rest is mine, sounds good to me.
I noticed the boxes she has on the hive is about 1 3/4" wider than the Langstroth 8 frame but it wouldn’t take a 9th frame so it might be a home made hive dimension wise, the length is right and the height seems to be right for full depth frames. The bees were super placid today, a huge change since the first visit.
Cheers
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Wow, @Plutoman15 you have been going through it! That’s a bum set of packages you got I guess. Any word from the supplier?
We’re finally through that long stretch of rain now & forage is gorgeous around here, so hopefully your plan to deal with it will come together, please keep us posted.
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Small update. I didn have much time but I got into 2 hives tonight.
I checked on one of the laying work hives that I shook out last week. The new queen has been released and she was alive. I think she is laying but hard to say just yet. Lots of drones in most of the hive from the laying workers.
I also checked my strong hive that has the old queen back in after her replacement didn’t mate and layed only drones. There are a few areas that could be capped workers but 90% drones through out the hive except where the old queen has been laying. When I merged her back in I pit a third deep on so she had some of her own nurse bees and 2 frames of capped brood.
My question is this, after all those drones hatch, will the workers tear down the drone comb or will they forever be drone comb? The drones are on comb that use to be worker cells. I did scrape off a few that only had small areas of drone but there is a ton of frames with drones on them.
Need some ideas on this.
You may not be able to do what I do on account that you may not have enough strong colonies. However what I do if drone brood is in worker comb is I damage all of the drone brood before slotting the frame into a strong colony in between two frames containing lots of workers. The workers will quickly remove the damaged brood before filling the comb with honey or brood, depending on whether I place it above or below a QX.
If the drones are in large areas of drone comb, I’ll cut the drone comb out before placing it above a QX for the rest of the workers (if any) to emerge so that the bees can fill that frame with honey. Then I can decide after harvesting the honey whether to keep using it for honey, or cut the comb out before fitting fresh foundation.
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So from that I assume you are using plastic foundation, so in that case I would scrape off any drone cells and let the bees decide what the colony needs are. They should build mainly worker cells but you can also expect a few drone cells towards the outside of the frame Drone cells above the QX can be used for storing honey or pollen. Below the QX in the brood area the cells will possibly produce drones but towards the outside it will be used for stores…
Regards.
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They will not tear it down. They can use it for honey, but they only tend to do that reliably if you put it above the queen excluder, as @JeffH says. The point of damaging the unemerged brood, as he discusses, is that if you don’t, your weakened hive will have even more male mouths to feed at a point when they are not bringing in much honey.
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I appreciate your update Joe, and everyone’s responses. This is great info to keep in mind in case this situation happens to me 
Thanks everyone. Seems I need to do a lot of scraping or replacing. The scraping gets kind of gross with all the squirting from drone larva. 
I ordered some more frame. Its a shame I am losing all that comb but the hive will be over run with drones if I don’t do something.
Joe
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Eww…or yum, if you consider that some folks on here have discussed making bee larva patties for dinner! @JeffH was that you??
About scraping that plastic foundation - not very easy! I recently did this in order to salvage the wax from some partially built frames that came with last year’s nucs (they died and I had the frames stored in the freezer). I reused a couple of fully built ones for the outermost positions, so the bees would be less likely to have to use them for brood rearing. I’m planning to cycle them out to the recycle bin when possible!
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Jeff has a heavy dose of the Aussie sense of humor, a top bloke (guy) and loves his bees.
Basically the aim is to destroy the cell structure (size) so there is no need to remove all of the wax, maybe if you have a heat gun and melt the wax down that would be easier.
I am always looking how I can make bee keeping easier, if not always faster, and have just ordered a 2000 watt heat gun to give it a try to melt the cappings off the honey frames. Having seen it done on YouTube that way and it seems to do less damage to the comb than a heat knife and less effort.
Regards
If you just use a capping scratcher to uncap them slightly, that is enough. Or stick the frames in the freezer over night, then defrost and put back in the hive. That will kill the drone larvae and the house bees will remove them.
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Hi Eva, that’s true, it’s me that made bee larvae patties. We haven’t done that for a few years. When you think about it, the amino acid & protein as well as other vitamins & enzymes shouldn’t really be ignored. It’s the brood that bears & honey badgers are mainly targeting, not the honey. One day I saw ants surrounding a single bee larvae & ignoring the honey attached to the piece of comb sitting on my table while extracting honey.
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Hi Joe, you need to make sure that you put that scraped drone larvae/pupae in between two frames containing lots of bees that will quickly clean it up, otherwise SHBs will be readily attracted to it. I try to only put one of those frames per colony, with SHB in mind.
As a reminder, keep SHBs in mind with every strategy you put into place.
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Hi Peter, I bought a heat gun for that same purpose after a Youtube viewer suggested that I try it. After just one frame, I went to work & set up my steam knife. The heat gun doesn’t do anywhere near as good a job as a steam knife because, with a steam/electric knife, you can square everything up again, including the top & bottom bars. You don’t realize how important that is until you start replacing the frames into the hives.
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