Hi I’m new to bee keeping, I have recently transferred my Nuc into my flow brood box and all frames are getting full so think it’s time to put the super on. I see that coating the flow frames with wax can help them get started. Just want to know, should I be collecting wax from the brood box to do this, doesn’t seem to be much in there? Some advise needed thank you
Do you have a local beekeeper with whom you could purchase some processed brood or honey wax from? 50 grams is all you need. Failing that, leave your bees in a single box until they start to deposit nectar in the lid (not the Flow hive roof, make sure they cannot access this area) then place the Flow super on top of the brood box with the lid containing uncapped nectar on top. You may need to purchase a migratory lid which has some space up top (2-3cm)
Welcome, Jared @laney
I prefer old wax from my hives, rather than new processed wax, the girls go crazy for it, probably due to the honey content.
Alas, you won’t have collected enough to fully coat all the frames, so as @Rodderick has suggested, you will need to buy some wax.
There are a couple of Western Australian threads in the forum, do a search and join in the conversations.
As you can see in the photo below, I get the wax nice and runny and paint it on with a large paintbrush, dabbing it down into the cells (make sure they are in the closed position before waxing). The advantage of using very warm wax is that it will run to the back of the cells giving the girls a good head start. With this particular wax job, using old wax the girls went straight to work.
This was taken this evening and the girls are really busy prepping the frames
Terry