We've assembled our first Flow Hive!

Introductions
22

Today, I’ve made my second real stupid mistake in beekeeping.

I wish I had some pictures for you regrettably i was too busy dealing with the events, but hear my story.

So a few days ago I was inspecting one of the hives, and was looking a frame of new comb the bees had drawn out almost all the way. Problem was it was a hot day so even though I was being careful with the frame a large portion of the comb ended up separating from itself and the rest of the frame and falling on the ground.

Initially It looked like a frame of honey, so I used my smoker to get as many bees off as i could. There was a bunch of bees trapped in honey which I tried to free, all in all it was one sticky deadly mess.

I estimate I lost something around 2 dozen bees that day.

Now the problem was when i took a closer look at some of the sections of comb I found out that there were uncapped larvae and eggs in a section of the comb, so what i did was separate this section from the honey comb and place in front of the bees entrance.

My thinking was that the bees would clean up the honey from the destroyed cells, and move the eggs and the larvae to cells closer to the center of the hive.

Fast forward to today, and i saw the bees still hanging around the comb, and i debated with myself as towards whether or not to collect the comb and regrettably made the mistake of doing so.

You see from what I could see it was largely empty cleaned out cells and debris. However I did see some black cells (which i mistook for debris) and some capped cells (which i mistook for honey).

Turns out most of those cells where filled with larvae when I opened them. So i tried placing back the bits of the now disassembled comb again at the front entrance and whatever larvae came out i placed also at the front entrance.

However while some of the bees were helping the larvae and cleaning them and trying to move them back into the hive. There was one bee that kept coming out of the hive and dejecting them onto the ground. Not sure if it was a nursing bee but it got into a few short fights with the drones outside, but after which it was largely ignored.

I initially thought this may be a bee from a different colony so i picked up one of the dejected larvae and put it back on the front entrance. Same bee (as far as I could tell) came and same story. I did this again this time closer to the entrance slot, and i saw a drone dragging it in, but then a few seconds later I saw the same bee come out with it from the hive and throw it out.

Now I have something akin to 30 dead bees and larvae on my conscious, and 200 grams of honey I scarcely want to touch but that my wife likes at least.

Price of learning is steep my friends.

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23

I am afraid that bees generally don’t move eggs and larvae in the way that ants do. If they have been out of the hive for any length of time, they will probably die anyway, as they need a temperature of at least 35C to continue developing. Usually bees will throw out pupae if you damage capped cells - in fact, this is used as a test for hygienic behavior by bee breeders. :blush:

Don’t be too hard on yourself. A good queen can lay up to 3,000 eggs per day - that is almost a whole side of one deep frame. They will quickly make up the numbers if they want to.

The most important thing is to learn from the experience. It sounds like you have done that. :wink:

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24

Now you know that comb not built on wired frames with foundation is so very fragile to breaking. So a lesson learned to always hold a new frame in the vertical position. The eggs and larvae you placed at the entrance were doomed, bees can’t move them about and take them back into the hive and put them into cells even if there was cells available for them. As Dawn says ants can do it but bees can’t.
So you made a couple of basic mistakes but you won’t do that again and can pass on that advice to other beginners. Put the experience down to becoming a better bee keeper.
Cheers

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25

Seeing new comb crash down out of a newly worked frame is very dejecting indeed. It can happen even when you are being careful. Nowadays when I know there’s new comb on a frame I try to move other frames away and only peek at it while it’s still inside the box, unless it’s not very hot outside. Once I made some that was mostly filled with nectar crash down onto the tops of the bottom box and across other more empty frames nearby without even lifting it - I was pushing gently, or so I thought, on the lugs to slide the frame over and it dislodged suddenly, jerking the wood away from the wax. A mess.

I think that as bad as this experience was for your morale, it will be a good start towards a better handle on colony life, what each kind of bee does and how to tell the difference in appearance between honey cells and brood cells. Don’t be too hard on yourself.

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26

I think it would be near on impossible not to make at least one mistake at first as I know from watching YouTubes that old timers can still make a mistake or two every now and again :slight_smile:

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