Was it all too much - removing drone brood and harvesting

Beekeeping - Basics
1

Hello, yesterday I did an inspection of the hive and got to witness a new bee emerge with at least 3 others trying to.

The hive looked good, brood, honey, no SHB that I could see and no varroa that I could see. There was a patch of drone brood which I decided to remove from the hive to try to reduce the varroa risk, so cut it out and froze it to dispose of later.

I also pulled the flow frames out to find 3 that were fully capped so decided to harvest some honey.

My problem now is that the bees, not all but quite a lot have spent the night outside on the hive. I know I had a honey leak; I stupidly opened all of the frame as I harvested instead of only part at a time. I only harvested 2 of the full frames, one after the other. I got 3791g of honey from the 2 frames,

My question is, was it too much losing the section of comb and having the honey leak? Do I need to open the brood box and do a clean-up of the honey spill?

Fingers crossed I haven’t upset my colony too much

2

Well, I think you know the answer to the first part. Yes, it was too much to having a honey leak. I doubt that removing drone brood would upset the whole colony though. :wink:

I would not open the brood box. The bees will clean it up better than you. You could pull out the sliding board/tray in the bottom of the hive and clean it off. Bees hate having wet feet, which is part of the reason why a lot of them moved outside. The other reason is that they are giving the house bees time and space to clean up. Getting honey off the brood will be a priority, so that the brood can breathe and be warmed again. Then they will save and recycle whatever they can.

Live and learn! Good luck and hopefully they will sort it out in the next day or three.

:blush:

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