White material on window

Wondering if anyone can identify? Thanks in advance

Located nsw Australia

It looks like wax to me.

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Ah! Seems they want their privacy huh? Should I clear it?

Thanks for the reply

Notice the lack of bees on the left of the frame where the white is compared to on the right. The white cells on the left concern me but without a close up shot I can’t say, but I am suspecting if it looks like cotton wool I would be thinking it is wax moth have got into the frame.
Cheers

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Thanks for the reply!
It seems to only be on the plastic clear part and not the frame? Does that fit?

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If it is only on the window (perspex) then my idea fall flat on its face. So now I am agreeing it is flakes of new wax but can’t figure out why it is on the window, never seen it before. I am thinking the bees have put it there for some reason we don’t know yet, but bees don’t do something without a reason. Maybe it will be used for capping the cells.
A welcome to the forum, quite a few Newcastle folks here as well as lots of info.
Cheers

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I agree that it looks like very fresh white wax flakes. You probably have a lot of keen young house bees who are over-producing and spreading their little flakes everywhere. Somebody else on the forum has seen this before a year or two ago.

Bees probably do it in wood boxes too, but we just don’t notice it. Anyone who has kept bees for a while will know that bees definitely wax the inside of the hive boxes over time - they take on a lovely deep polish on the walls. Waxing perspex doesn’t work quite so well. :blush:

No rush to remove it. You may find that the bees tidy it up over time anyway. :wink:

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Hi Anderson,

Can you please confirm what you would like identified? From the other responses, I’m guessing the window?
To me, it looks like a blurry photo. But is there something on the window inside?
Did you take the clear cover off the window before you assembled the Hive?

I have sometimes seen some comb built off the side of the perspex window, it looks pretty obvious though. Nothing a bit of scraping won’t get off if you want it off. You will just need to take your Flow Frames out of your Super and then you will be able to get a bit closer to inspect (and remove wax if wanted).

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Hi, sorry about the quality of photo. Looks clear on my device but the white flakes resemble small polystyrene pieces on the inside of the window. We did remove the protective covering when assembling the hive in early November.
Thank you for all your input, I very much appreciate it!

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My strong hives all have wax flakes on the windows. Guess they don’t know where to put all the excess wax their body produces. Sometimes they start building comb on the windows even.
Just leave it. I’ve seen them clean it up sometimes.

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100% nothing to worry about- it’s a good sign- and it’s wax. You bees are just doing very well. Frames look largely filled and being capped out. There must be a good flow on. Congratulations! If the outer frame looks like that chances are many of the inner ones are already largely capped out and ready for harvest.

got given a swarm once which I just placed on top of a hive. For one day they clustered on the outside before they all moved in on masse. When they had moved in- there was white spots of wax identical to what is on your window on the outside of the hive where they had clustered. When they are in swarm mode- or building comb fast during a good flow- they produce an excess of wax it seems. You see the same globs of wax left on any branch a swarm has clustered on.

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Same issue I have it. It doesn’t usually get out of control. Every now and again I just scrape it off.

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It’s just a sign of a full strong hive. It’s the time when they might draw comb under the roof too, if you leave the hole in the inner cover open.
When I see lots of wax on the windows, I give them frames to draw.
Either by doing a split, replacing brood frames with foundationless ones, or putting a foundationless ideal or a foundationless rounds super on top.
That stops all the wax throwing on windows.
I did observe that they clean up the wax bits at some stage, probably reusing it somewhere needed.

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There seems to be some confusion between wax flakes & wax. Wax flakes are opaque. Wax turns white after bees mix it with saliva. The white wax on the inside of the window has been deposited there on purpose after the wax flakes have been mixed with saliva.

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True, it’s deliberate. If I don’t give them other comb jobs to do, they will draw comb on the window and connect sections to the flow frame next to it.
It only happens when the colony is strong and on a good flow. To me, it’s really a good sign - and a call to action.
They do it between the frames too and on the back ‘window’.

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Hi, just want to update followers regarding my initial concern and let you know the “white material” on the inside of the flow window is wax.
Thank you all for your knowledge and help
Annie.

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Hi Dawn, I’ve been thinking about your comment: “a lot of keen young house bees who are over-producing and spreading their little flakes everywhere”. I have to refer to my favorite beekeeping video “City of Bees”. In that video you’ll see how bees purposely produce wax by gorging on honey, then after many hours of bees hanging in a bee chain, the wax flakes start to appear from the bees that gorged on honey.

When we consider how efficient bees are at utilizing their resources, it doesn’t make sense that bees would gorge all that honey just to produce wax that’s not needed.

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See all that honey in the photo that is almost ready to be capped though? Maybe they produced the wax, then decided it wasn’t quite ripe enough to cap it. As @ara said, they have since recycled it. :blush:

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Dawn, yes I was just pondering the exact same thing.

I returned a lot of stickies this morning, it was churning over in my head while scraping some of the bur comb away before replacing the stickies.

I extracted 11 boxes yesterday in 30+ degrees plus humidity. At the end I told Wilma, we had so much fun today, we can do it all again next weekend!!! The heat & humidity that @Peter48 thought was over :slight_smile:

Sadly the outlook for next weekend is exactly the same.

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@ara, I just refurbished an older pine flow super, repainting, because moisture got into the joins.
I noticed an invisible very thin layer of wax over the entire inside window.
DO NOT use a hive tool to scrape the wax off the window. The perspex will get scratches.

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