Hi. I got our first hive home today . Some elderly friends sold it to us. They owned it 9 months and never took honey from it.
We leveled it with a 3 degree lean to the rear. And cleaned out a lot of black ants that had made a home up the top rear. The bottom tray was full of some sort of grey bug residue like woven small long socks. A few dead small Moths and ants. The feet cups were filled with oil and then the Bees let loose. We live 16 kilometers from their old home so I let them out straight away.
My questions. What type of Flow Hive is it?
Why does it have three boxes when I see new ones being sold have two boxes?
Its got a base , a Brood box and the top flow frame section. The middle one is a Super is it?
The flow frames are empty at the rear and side view. I assume the bees are still filling what ever is in the Brood box and first super. would that be right? Here’s a picture of it. Hopefully it loads. I’m in no rush for Honey but need to know what steps to take to ensure everything is running correctly.
Thanks . Rob
Hiya Rob and welcome to the forum! This looks like a Flow Hive 2 to me but I’ll defer to others with a better eye.
Please inspect all the frames inside as soon as you can - this sounds like wax moth debris to me. If wax moths are in there then your colony is weak and needs attention. Wax moths move in when colonies are struggling and can’t defend against them.
Let’s see what you find but it’s likely you’ll need to remove the Flow super and may need to also condense down to one brood box.
Hi Eva and thanks. I will be reading here and in my book that just arrived more on how to inspect and what to do with what I see as well. I know nothing about doing that. I’m waiting on a suit to arrive as well.
I just went out to where I dumped the tray residue and took pictures of it. The tray was full of that.
Rob .
Definitely wax moth - the little white pill-shaped things are cocoons, and the sandy looking grey tubes are the silk tunnels they make as they chew thru comb. Over time they turn comb into what amounts to dirt.
Can you find an experienced beek nearby who can go thru the hive with you? And maybe lend you a suit? I have my fingers crossed that there may still be a salvageable number of bees and a queen, but the pic doesn’t bode well
I’m going to ring a local “Beek” 
today and see if he could help or maybe know of someone else who could.
And I could rig up something to wear. I’ve watched a few YT vids on moth larvae in the comb and the only remedy I saw was freezing the frames for 48 hours . Is there anything else I could do that saves the good comb? Like scrape or stab the larvae with a spike or something? And scrape off the bits where they attach and burrow into the wood?
If I can’t find anybody I’ll smoke and take apart the hive but don’t know what to do from that point. It’d be good to know rather than take pictures to ask about. But I’ll do that if I have to.
Also why are the silk tunnels in the tray ? Did the larvae go from them up through the mesh to get to wax? Or did they do their thing in the wax and go down through the mesh to form silk tunnels ?
Rob
Please buy a good suit as @Eva suggests, or at least a jacket with veil and gloves. If you are going to be a good beekeeper, you will need them all, plus a smoker.
That hive needs completely dismantling. Wax moths only take over when the hive is weak. My first move would be to take off the Flow super with the plastic Flow frames, and leave it off if there aren’t many bees in the rest of the hive. I would then inspect the other 2 boxes frame by frame and assess how much food/brood there is in each. Keep the good frames, and put those damaged extensively by wax moths on one side.
If there aren’t many bees, I would try to condense them all down into one box, so that they have less space to heat/cool and defend. I would give them the best frames of food and brood, keeping the brood in the middle of the box. If there are enough bees, they will deal with the remaining wax moths. They probably can’t win against ants, so you need to completely clear those out for them.
Two brood boxes are great when you have cooler winters, or long nectar dearths. Here in dry California, almost all hobby beekeepers use double brood. When the hive is weak, you need to god down to one box and let them rebuild.
Depending on the state of the moth damaged frames, you could freeze and re-use them, or cut out and replace the wax after freezing the wood. The silk tunnels are probably in the tray because the wax in a frame is falling apart and the tunnels dropped down with the wax. The moths may also have accessed any wax already in the tray and laid eggs in there. The tray needs cleaning every couple of weeks to prevent this kind of thing. 
I know that I am really just repeating what @Eva has already said, but her advice is good, so it is worth emphasizing it. You are facing quite a big job, so it would be very helpful to recruit a local beekeeper to help you at the start. Most local bee clubs have somebody who is willing to mentor new beekeepers, especially if you offer to compensate them for their time. 
Good luck!
Good, glad you will have help 
How you go about cleanup and rescue will depend on the level of damage & infestation. Scraping, stabbing, smashing larvae works nicely 
but there will be eggs you can’t see, which is the reason for freezing frames before reusing.
About the tubes in the tray, this is a place where moths could have gotten their initial foothold because the bees can’t patrol it. Flow2 keepers are meant to check the tray and keep it clean for this reason. I’m guessing the moths were living on bits of wax that fell thru the lower screen there. Less likely possibility is a hole in the screen that allowed it to fall from the frames onto the tray.
Thanks for the help here once again . Just an update . My suit took two weeks to arrive. The carriers took their time. My new Beek Freind came over last Sunday and the hive was inspected. He was instructing me what to do. Not a drop of honey in the top Flow super but the joins in each frame are sealed by the bees it seems. The second super down was full of honey, some comb crossed between frames. No sign of wax moth . We saw one hive beetle. We took six frames of honey out and replaced them with empty frames that had partly been built with comb by bees. 3 we kept and the other three were left near the hive in a basket covered with a cage and the bees had all that honey in them emptied clean in two days .
The queen excluder came off and we inspected the brood box . Once again not one sign of wax moth! Great! I saw one moth . And two more hive Beatles . One got squished . We never spotted the queen . Both the brood and mid super was packed with friendly bees. No aggressive behaviour. We also couldn’t spot eggs. Just our inexperience I’m hoping. My friend thought some of the capped cells were possibly larvae? So all pretty good. The flow hive was left off . Both remaining boxes are now brood boxes. They have room to get busy on the 6 new frames and we are going to inspect in two weeks to look for eggs? Queen ? Or what ever progress is made on the new frames . And hopefully we see confirmation 100% that the queen is in there. The three frames gave us roughly between 2 and 2.5 litres of lovely honey. Manually squishing wax and honey was a job Using cheese cloth to press it out by hand ! I like the look of those screw press bench mounted stainless things for next time maybe .
Rob .
My Beek friend was impressed with how healthy the hive looked . He was, as we also were expecting the worst . What ever the stuff in the tray was must have been moth action in the tray in a hive that was never touched for 9 months and they never took hold above that ? We are leaving feeding them atm. They may get some sugar/ water in two weeks.
Rob .
Hi Rob,
Sounds to me like you indead have a healthy Colony, the activity regarding your brood is typical of a reduced brood pattern, so you can expect the hive cluster to contract. As our days become increasingly cooler your cluster will eventually move to the top brood box, this is the colonies attempt at managing internal tempretures with the increasing outside ambient cool. Queen excluders should not be utilised while overwintering. The Queen can be fatally trapped below as the colony moves up without her, Prompting fatal thermal tempretures in her being in isolation.
You will require stores for your colony to last the winter months, i hope your Beekeeper friend has advised you on the pathway ahead with overwintering. A rule of thumb is that you should have 6-8 frames of honey. (Local advice may be more specific). Feeding with sugar water is necessary to build stores, however Bees cannot process sugar water below 15 degrees in tempretures so fondant or sugar Bricks is an alternative.
Its great to hear your colonies situation is translating to a strong and healthy hive. Thank you for the detailed update and i look forward to hearing further a your journey forward with your Bees.
Kind regards,
Scol.
Thanks Scol.
The Queen excluder is sitting at the very top of the two boxes just under the top lid. The hole in the lid has a piece of flat wood over it and the roof is over all that.
Rob
Thank you for filling us in with the details Rob, one can never know for sure what the situation is so we just provide as much info as we can.
Please keep us up to date with your colonies progress.