First time user of the Flow Hive. Installed with Queen Excluder this Spring. Checked Super today to see in inner frames were capped to find eggs and larve in the Super.
How does this happen?
Checked brood boxes below and they have eggs and larve as you would expect. How did the Queen get to the Super?? How do I fix this mess.
Been beekeeping for 40 years with traditional hives never encountered this before.
If I had you could just move these frames to the brood boxes and replace with new ones. This is not the same due to the design of the Plastic Supers with special extraction design.
I just don’t see how the Queen can get above the excluder. Is it possible that another queen entered the hive from above??? confused.
Thanks for any thoughts and suggestions.
Hank
Hi Hank, sorry to hear you’re in a pickle but welcome to the forum just the same! I’ve heard of this happening but only when people leave the QX off…have you had a chance to check yours for any missing segments? The other possibility is laying workers…I found a thread with more detail about this, hopefully you’ll find more direct advice:
Is your queen new? She could just be small and getting through or you have laying workers.
If it’s the Queen laying then you excluder is allowing her through. Fix that, let the brood develop and the bees should clean it out and use for stores.
My buckfast Queens are huge and not something I’ve experienced so not much else I can chip in. Worse case, pressure hose out the eggs, larvae.
Hope you get it sorted.
Hank, how did this work out for you. I have the same problem this year. I don’t know how to get the brood out before i take the super off come this fall. Any help would be welcome.
I think the only solution would be to make sure the queen is confined to the brood box, then let the brood emerge naturally, while making sure that the new drones have an escape rout. Otherwise they’ll get stuck while trying to exit through the QE, which can lead to hive beetle activity, if there is a buildup of dead drones above it.
After that, there will be an issue (as a client of mine found) of honey not flowing past the leftover cocoons. This of course is assuming you’re talking about the Flow super
Thanks, Jeff. I am talking about the flow super. So assuming I get that far where the queen is out, the brood all hatches and the drones don’t get stuck. What did you/they do about the leftover cocoons?
You’re welcome. It appears that the best solution is to pull the frames apart before removing the cocoons. In my case, the owner got me to remove the hive so he could get some work done adjacent to where the hive sits. I got as much honey out as I could before letting bees remove the rest. Then I sat the frames in my honey room to allow wax moths to remove the cocoons over time, which they did.
That was 2.5 years ago, & I haven’t heard from the owner. Maybe they’re mine now, regardless, all the frames need now is a decent hosing to remove all the crud, which will bring them back to near new.
That’s really helpful. I appreciate your sharing your experience.