Supered up two boxes Friday afternoon. It was a nice warm sunny day. I was having an OCD thing with the misaligned
boxes and decided to fix it. I took two
supers full of empty frames out in a long plastic box with all my tools. I brought gloves but decided not to wear
them. Top super came off with little or
no difficulty simply prying a little here and there with the hive tool. The next super down was the one that wasn't
sitting plumb on the deep. I pried the
super from the box but couldn't lift it or move it around. Closer inspection revealed that the frames
from the lower box were propolized and waxed to frames in the upper box.
I took all the empty frames out of my spare boxes and
carefully removed each frame from the stuck box and put it into the empty
box. I moved slowly and said calming
things to the bees. I occasionally gave
them a small puff of smoke. They were
surprisingly tolerant of all this manipulation.
Outer frames were full of honey and inner frames were brood comb. Unfortunately the very middle one had brood
come bridging two frames and stuck to lower frames. It was essentially causing the problem. I did the best I could to remove it without
causing damage but ended up losing a 4 inch slab of brood comb. I kept looking for the queen but did not spot
her. Once I got the chunk out of the
middle everything started moving around just fine.
I decided not to disturb the lower box because the queen
was likely down there and the bulk of the brood nest. I ended up putting it all back together and
staggering empty and full boxes. It's
now a deep and four shallows. The bees
did not seem to mind my intrusion. The
four inch comb that fell out of the frame I brushed all the bees into the hive
from it and put it in my tote. I wanted
to put it back into the hive but was unsure how to do it. I considered leaving it at the front of the
hive but thought that might cause a robbing scenario. Thus far the local wasps and wood borer bees
have been abundant around our house but have been leaving the bee hive alone.
Happy to report that despite not wearing gloves I didn't
get a single sting. Ironically a friend
from work who is interested in keeping bees was washing his car and got stung
by a yellow jacket. I told him about my
working on the hive and all the bees everywhere and not getting stung
once. I am not sure he believes me.
I am glad I added supers because the bees had filled all
but two frames with comb and honey in the topmost box. Most frames were two thirds capped honey and
one third uncapped. Since this is the
beginning of the nectar flow I surmised that it was mostly raw nectar in the
one third that was uncapped. Couldn't
resist licking my fingers through the veil mesh and was delighted with the
sweet sticky goodness in the hive.
All in all I had big time! Happy to report the bees kept coming and
going with nectar and occasionally pollen the rest of the day and seemed to
recover from my intrusion with no problems.
I decided not to use the frame lift tool. I found it better to slip my fingers in
between the frames gradually pushing bees out of my way. I worried that if I used the tool I might
accidentally crush one. I discovered
that the inner cover was upside down so the bees couldn't use the top
entrance. It was propolized shut. I removed the propolis with hive tool and put
the inner cover right side up. Haven't
noticed the bees using it yet.
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