Hello All. 3 Nucs installed 3 weeks ago. Flow Supers added 2 days ago. 2 hives have accepted Flow and activity is dispersed throughout the Super. But…one has a congregation of bees and are not dispersed throughout. Anyone know what’s going on? Here is a pic.
Hiya Bill, 3 weeks isn’t a long time for the bees to have built out the brood box. Are all the frames drawn in it?
It looks like you have rubbed wax onto the Fframes, perhaps there was something in that piece the bees are interested in.
Oh and welcome to the forum.
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Welcome to the forum Bill, as @skeggley has said, but I will be a little blunter, you fitted the super on way to quickly and so doing that will actually set the colony backwards. Bees like a crowded hive, and there is no way possible the brood box is crowded in that short a time. Bees like to work as a team and you are denying them that with too much space. No offense meant. Cheers
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Good morning and thanks for the info…In this case the 8 frame box was drawn on 7 and they were working on the 8th.
My question was to gain insight on why the bees appeared to be clustering on the Flow Frame rather than working in a dispersed manner as the other hives.
Any thoughts?
Yes, I have had thoughts.
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They could be waxing the cells. They usually cluster (and festoon) when building comb on traditional frames, so you may be seeing a group of bees working on preparing the Flow super for honey storage.
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I get the feeling they are taking the wax to use in the bottom box or to seal up any cracks