When I paint a box I paint the edges as rain water will seap into the joint between the boxes and that is where the moisture will soak into the timber and if left unpainted that is where the box will degrade.
Cheers
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My in-stinks really stink with that prediction, maybe just a hope for a let up of the heat and humidity but it is back today. Isnât yet 0900 and sweating up just typing.
Cheers
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Same here Pete, I wasnât game to agree with you when you said it. Anyway thereâs light at the end of the tunnel, however far away that is. It looks like Sunday is our first day under 30deg.
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I agree that bees wouldnât likely create wax they canât use- however perhaps in the case of a swarm they have no choice sometimes? I imagine before a swarm leaves they gorge on the honey to fuel the journey and prepare themselves to start building comb as soon as they have found a new colony location- perhaps sometimes they donât find one quick enough and the bees start producing wax before they are ready to use it? that may explain the globules of wax you see on branches a swarm has gathered on?
as to wax on windows and the walls of hives, etc- perhaps thatâs something the bees do when they have honey/wax to spare? Maybe they are kind of âinsulatingâ, âwaterproofingâ, or generally making the hive more âhomelyâ by coating the walls with wax? Do natural beehives in tree hollows often end up coated with wax and/or propolis? I have seen natural hives where the bees have reduced the entrance with large quantities of propolis.
We had a talk from a commercial beekeeper in Adelaide at the bee society who said that he believes the propolis seal bees create is sort of âpart of their immune systemâ- that they do it to create a barrier for pests, drafts and diseases. Supposedly it is anti-microbial. For that reason he does not like to break it if he can help it and reduces his inspections to the minimum he can. It makes sense to me. Perhaps there is something about the acrylic window surface that the bees donât quite like so they try to cover it in wax?
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Hi Jack, there maybe more goes on while a swarm is hanging somewhere than we realize. The result of bees hanging off each other for many hours is the bees supporting the most weight produce wax flakes. The bees at the bottom donât.
I wonder if the bees continually rotate positions, so as to avoid wax being produced during a period when they donât need it. There must be some wax produced, which explains the wax deposits left behind.
I think the fact that the bees used the wax inside the window of the above photo shows that itâs likely the bees put it there in readiness for when the honey was ripe, as Dawn suggests.
I think itâs only propolis that bees use to line the inside of their hives. Similar to native bees, they use a resin type substance to line & water proof the inside of their hives.
I think a good way to look at the subject is: bees use wax to build comb to house brood pollen & honey. They use propolis for gap filling & lining the inside of their hive.
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My bees tend to use wax for lining smooth timber walls (and Perspex) in a very thin layer, but propolis to close gaps and smooth out rough spaces and timber.
I recently read advice to severely roughen up the inside walls of your bee boxes in order to get a good propolis harvest.
Before the bees put nectar into the flow cells, these are also lined with a thin layer of wax. I think Southern Cross University did the research and took microscopic photos as evidence.
Guess wherever the bees call home is covered in wax and propolis.
The wax is a really thin layer though, hard to see, but you can feel it.
Just like on the Perspex, the wax layer is transparent (apart from the blobs). You can see the smear once you run your finger over it.
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Mine do exactly the same-as others have noted, itâs just wax.
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White material on my window too⌠and filled with honey!!
It is bees wax in your pics Fred, I have seen it on my windows but in a few days it seem to have gone and been used by the bees. Just something bees do that works for them.
Cheers
gee- your flow frames are looking nice! Bees should get to capping pretty soon.
