I live in Washington on Pueget Sound where we have a LOT of moisture. I’m going to put one of these together and try it out next winter. Sure looks and sounds like it will help with the condensation. Thanks
I think the US is so huge people have trouble imagining it. Even people in the US have trouble imagining how huge Nebraska is. I’m currently in Nehawka, Nebraska, which is actually 450 miles (725 km) from Scottsbluff Nebraska… but I used to live 15 miles from Scottsbluff. I think they are in Sioux county, which might put them 500 miles from here (805 km) in a county that is 2,067 sq mi (5,354 km2) and is about the size of Delaware… it’s a big state. And Sioux isn’t the biggest county… When I first moved to the Omaha area I kept saying things like “back in Nebraska we didn’t get nearly this much rain…” etc. and people would say “but you are in Nebraska” and I would say “this is nothing like Nebraska”…
Cherry County Nebraska is 6,009 sq mi, (15,563 km2) which is larger than Rhode Island or Delaware or Connecticut and 2/3 the size of New Jersey, or New Hampshire, or Vermont or Massachusetts and half the size of Maryland.
Nebraska is 77,348 sq mi. (200,330 km2) and is roughly the size of the Island of Great Britain (77,348 vs 80,823). There are 16 states that are larger than Nebraska.
@Dee So do you put the inner cover on top of the moisture quilt box before you put the roof on or do you put the roof on directly on top of the quilt box?
Inner cover/Insulation/Roof
I prefer solid PIR insulation to a moisture quilt
Y’all should come to Australia. Country is the same size but the number of people is only 25mil.
Plus we have a lot of local variation on the East Coast where 95% of the people live.
When I’m talking to bee people I get all sorts of advice which may be great for them and their neighbour but I’m in a completely different climate.
Which brings me to my question.
This is a bit different.
In the top box I’ve currently got a bunch of bees I rescued from a log last season.
I tried to save some of their good straight comb by placing it in frames held by elastic bands.
It wasn’t entirely straight though and I could only fit 7 frames in the box. As a result I’ve got a fair bit of cross comb joining everything up.
To fix this problem I added a box below with the idea that once they built comb and moved down into the bottom I could start fixing the top box.
Given all the wet weather we have been having this spring I think I added the new box way too early. They still haven’t built any comb in the bottom box and its been about 5 weeks now.
I’m rather new to bee keeping and at the time the only spare box I had was my flow frame box. That has meant that I have been able to keep an eye on the bottom box without opening the hive.
So question…is this level of condensation normal?
G’day Stuart, I would remove the bottom box. It looks like the bees have too much moist air to expel out of the hive. I would get the bees building onto nice straight combs with wax foundation & eventually move those current frames above the QX for the brood to hatch so the bees can replace it with honey. Then I would either use those frames as honey frames or cut the comb out & insert fresh foundation.
Check that all the comb you saved is all good worker comb & not drone comb as I’ve seen other people insert into frames. It would be good if you can make the worker brood comb fit snugly in the frames so that you can fit the 8 frames in the box. The quicker you sort that out, the easier it will be down the track.
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I agree with @JeffH. Your bees have too much space, and you need to move them into fewer boxes. As a guide for the future, do not add an new box (of any sort - brood or super/harvest) until your existing box has frames which are at least 80% full of brood, honey and/or pollen and ALL frames are completely covered with bees.
If they are still making crazy comb, you will need to fix that first. So I would re-rubber band the frames if they are still crazy, then let them fill them. Then only add more space once you have happy and productive bees in your current box.
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Cant fix the crazy comb without seriously damaging the colony.
Hence the desire to get a new box started and working before damaging the existing one.
Yes well if you don’t want to disturb the colony, you’d be better off to put a new box on top & let the colony build into that. As it grows, the queen will most likely move into that one. Once that happens & you have a good population building, you could reverse the boxes, making sure the queen is in the new box & put the old box above a QX to let all the brood hatch so that the bees will replace the brood with honey. Once that happens, you can pull the old comb apart, retrieve the honey & sort the frames out.
If you wanted to speed that process up, you could unite a queenless colony with it using the newspaper method. Only do this during good weather.