Mould in inspection tray?

We are new to beekeeping and have had our flowhive set up in the orchard with chooks for 3 weeks. We are on 5 acres with permaculture gardens, native gardens and national parks nearby as well. Hive is raised on a platform about 500mm and gets good all round ventilation. We did a mini inspection today (Just roof and tray) to check how everything was going with wet weather. There is some black mould on exterior of hive (this gets on everything in our climate), however there was some white mould in the front of inspection tray? We cleaned this, dried it and replaced? Should we be worried about this? Don’t want to open hive for a full inspection till the weather improves! Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

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There will always be debris that falls into the tray and gets moldy when conditions are like you describe.

My suggestion is to clean the tray more often. The bees can’t access that space to keep it clean.

It is often been suggested that the space (and screened bottom boards) may be more harmful than good, but that’s a different discussion.

Inspecting the tray for normal and abnormal debris is useful but that’s a little hard to do when it is all wet.


I noticed some mold on several frames in a hive I want to reuse. Should I destroy these frames or just cut away the moldy parts?

If you cut away the moldy parts, the bees will replace it with drone comb. Those frames look like frames that I would cut all the comb out of before fitting fresh foundation.

Jeff, thanks for the comment. Why would you remove all the comb in the frames?

It would be hard to put foundation in if you don’t remove all the comb - I can’t tell if there’s already foundation in there - if there is, then you can just scrape off the moldy part and leave the rest.

But what @JeffH is saying is that if you just cut out the moldy comb, the bees will fill the open hole in foundationless comb with drone comb, which isn’t the most desirable.

I wasn’t considering that you probably have plastic foundation in that frame. My advice was concerning wax foundation.

I suspect that the frames are fitted with plastic foundation. In that case you can scrape the affected part away from the foundation. The bees will repair it with fresh wax.

@chau06 , I can see that the frames are fitted with foundation, as opposed to foundationless on account of the comb being so straight & even. The top row of cells is parallel with the top bar, which you don’t or rarely see with foundationless comb.

With foundationless comb in frames, you’ll see how bees start building comb in several places along the top bar, which will end up with a telltale join where they meet.

Thanks for the comments. The frames I have are with foundation as Jeff observed, so I appreciate the distinctions given between foundation and foundation-less frames. I will plan to scrape out the moldy sections before re-using the frames.

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