Un oh.. Crystallisation

well… everyone has been talking about it and I’ve been keeping an eye out for it and BOOM!!!

as the bee numbers are dropping with the approach of winter less bees are in the top box, less nectar coming in etc etc the inevitable happened…

the colder outer frame filled to around 70% to 80% and then stopped… a few cells got capped but that’s it… then it started to crystallised… :confused:

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What are you going to do with it, Andrew?
Heat the whole frame gently?

so far I’ve pulled the super off and packed the hive down to just the brood box for the winter…

I’ve drained the honey and packed it in jars… thin but yummy…

I’m thinking about putting the half crystallised frame back out on a warm day so that the bees can clean it out??

If you leave that frame in as a food source the bees can eat of it during the winter over. Or save it for spring feed when they’ve ate through their winter supply.

I was going to leave all of the frames in but when I saw it start to crystallise I thought that its no use in having frames blocked full of crystallised honey… ?

I don’t recommend leaving it on over winter. You could put it over the inner cover and many times the bees see that as outside the hive and will clean it out and move the stores down.

hmm, I might give that a go :slight_smile:

ok,

I put the super on top of the brood box cover that has the small hole in the middle…

this is the result…

let me know if you see any crystallised honey in there :wink:

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Nope looks great! I guess @Anon might know something, after all! :smile:

How long did the whole process take? I bill by the hour :laughing:

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Even a blind nut finds a squirrel from time to time lol

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