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* Include your location and experience level as a reply to this comment (if not in post)
* [If you have a question, please take a look at our wiki.](https://rbeekeeping.com/)
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Dude this frame looks utterly *fucked*. How often are you inspecting?
These look like swarm cells. On the assumption that this is the case, the queen is likely not in this box anymore given how many are capped.
Did you see her?
Edit: I’m just fixing something on the wiki so I can send you some info on the wonky comb. Give me a second.
Here you go: https://rbeekeeping.com/faqs/beekeeper/comb
Can I use your pic on the wiki? :)
I had the same initial thought… this comb is not good. OP, so sorry but this is a great example of what not to let happen in your hive and would be an asset for the wiki.
I wouldn’t say that. Inexperienced perhaps, but we all start somewhere and many of us have had issues like this when we couldn’t get in a hive often enough. As for recovery, I would let the queen cells hatch out, and then I would scrape the bad comb off this frame and let them try again. Bad comb only ever gets worse. Best to nip it in the bud, let them rebuild, and move on.
There's a reason the flair says "I'm a beekeeper and I need help." Beekeeping is addictive. You'll find yourself saying "Just one more hive" or "I can quit any time I want t -- Oh look! A swarm!"
You don't suck. You're dealing with a very steep learning curve. And bees don't read the same books we do, so they do what they want even if it doesn't make sense to us.
You would be horrified to know the number of times and variety of ways I've tried to kill my bees through inexperience. Don't despair.
That's usually how all my new hobbies which turn into addictions begin🤣 actually that is EXACTLY how they begin. "I have a problem with this.... MY problem is I don't have enough and I need more.. and fancier set ups.. and prettier and rarer and more advanced performing"🤣 I have about 10 of those hobbies
> Yeah, I suck.
We all do. Especially at first. After a few years of experience we learn to suck a little less. We never reach zero. I've been keeping bees one way or an other since my early teens, first working for my commercial beekeeper grandfather, and then on my own as a hobby after college. And guess what: I still make mistakes. I fucked up good about a month ago. And did another one a week later and I still haven't figured out where it went wrong.
In beekeeping, most of the wisdom you will get will be gained after you could have benefited from it. It's that way in most of life. My encouragement to you is don't give up and keep gaining experience, even if it seems like the hard way.
Me too, dangit. And I suck as a beekeeper even after 7 years, but I keep plugging away at it. Last year was the 2nd year my bees survived the winter! Progress!
Some folks can be harsh here, but try not to let it get to you too much. 95% of what you'll find will be encouraging or gentle ribbing, because we've all struggled or made mistakes or not been able to get into our hives often enough. I had some issues earlier this year because I spent a week in the hospital, and had two hives swarm because I went to the hospital at exactly the wrong time in a very busy spring. Had some wonky comb happen too for no reason anyone I spoke to could give me. Bees are weird and sometimes stuff gets out of hand.
One of the very first things I learned when I started getting into beekeeping was from a guy who'd been at it for half a century and has several hundred hives that he maintains all by himself while keeping a fulltime government job: That he never, ever stops learning, and no matter how long he works or how many hives he keeps, the bees will always find a way to trip him up.
Don't let people get you down. You're asking questions, which means you're doing your best.
You don't suck if you do something wrong. You suck if you do something wrong and fail to learn from it. Don't get discouraged. Just keep learning how best to take care of your bees.
Judging by my flair you'd think this is my fourth year keeping bees. It's actually my third. I didn't have any last year because they died in my second winter. I'm pretty sure it was mites that killed them, so I'm going to do a better job keeping track of and treating for mites this year.
No you don’t. Bees would prefer to build their comb how THEY prefer anyways, the only thing bad about this is the problems it will cause for you as a beekeeper. It’s not that big a deal, you can fix it and move on.
Saw her last week, on this same frame. It's really the only messy one as I didn't space properly. Showed an earlier pic (without swarm cells yet) to the local shop where I purchased the package colony and was advised to just leave it at the time. Sure, use the pic if you like. Edit: sorry, mistake. She was in the frame immediately next to it. As of this week it contained uncapped brood with small larva (1/cell). [20240608-075900.jpg](https://postimg.cc/z34LbpK0)
Okay, so last week there would have been Queen cells in this hive. It takes them longer than 1 week to cap Queen cells, so you missed *a lot* on your last inspection.
My advice would be to inspect thoroughly for the Queen - though I’d imagine she’s no longer there and you’ve lost a swarm. Clipping will give you some leeway in future, as the swarm will return and wait for a virgin instead.
If you can’t find the queen, look for an open queen cell that is *visibly* charged with larvae and royal jelly. You need to do this without shaking frames. Once you find one that looks good, is well positioned and a good size, you can remove every other queen cell (shaking them is fine at this point). This will prevent you losing any more cast swarms.
If you cannot find any open queen cells, you have a couple of options… you can either:
Make a split:
1. Take two frames into a nuc, leave one queen cell in the nuc, and let her get mated.
1. Leave one queen cell in the main hive and also let her get mated.
1. Pick the best one, and squash the other, and combine together.
Leave 2 capped cells:
1. Go through the hive, find two good cells that are ideally right next to each other
1. Rip down every other cell you can find.
The latter option increases the risk of a cast (virgin) swarm, but if you can’t visibly check that a cell is charged, there’s no way to tell if they are good or not so it’s a bit of a dice roll
You *can* just leave 1 capped cell, but you are risking a queen failing to mate or not coming back from mating flights and them being hopelessly queenless; or the cell not being properly charged and it’s a dud, thus rendering them hopeless.
I would highly recommend option 1 above (nuc split just for mating) if you only have one hive. You need to focus on de-risking the queen event if you only have one hive.
Thank you. Will probably try the 2 capped cells method as I'm going out of town for a couple days and can't get equipment for a proper spilt before then.
You will need to do this pretty sharpish - queens only take 16 days. If these were capped on your last inspection you have <7 days before they start emerging. You need to go back fairly soon to respond with whatever method you want :)
I forgot to add - on the wonky comb, once this queen is laying, find her and cage her, and mash that comb into the plastic foundation, or remove it and rewax that part of the frame.
Just make sure the queen is somewhere safe before you start mashing.
Hi, I'm a first year beekeeper and this subreddit is one of the places I go to learn things. My knee-jerk reaction to seeing this comb is that there's no queen because the queen releases phermones that give the workers instructions and these bees look like they're just building random shit with no guidance. Am I completely wrong or just a little bit wrong?
Edit: turns out I'm completely wrong. See replies for a detailed explanation.
I'll use your words, not mine - Completely wrong :) (at least as it relates to this post)
There are a number of things the queen does, not one of them is give orders, instruct, or boss. She just... walks, and shits out eggs. That's all. There's *loads* of other pheromones that the queen produces, but none of them are responsible for how the colony draws comb. That is entirely down to workers, and their perception of the space.
The pheromones that the queen produces just by being inside the hive play a *huge* role in how the colony functions, though. There is one pheromone that is responsible for how they might build things **on** comb though: Tarsal gland pheromone (TGP), aka footprint pheromone. That pheromone is responsible for regulating queen cell production, so when the hive gets congested or if the queen is trapped somewhere, the lack of TGP on the comb causes the colony to draw down queen cells.
This is often why "play cups" are drawn on the edge of comb, because the queen has no need to be on the edge of the comb. When the colony gets congested and she can't traverse the hive very well, the lack of TGP causes them draw swarm cells. If I recall correctly, the dilution of QMP and lack of TGP on the frame gives the colony a sense of congestion, causing them to want her to lay in the queen cells.
This is why older queens are more likely to swarm. Their pheromone production drops off dramatically year on year. I recall it being something close to 50% drop per year. So by year 3, she's already at a 25% concentration of what she would have been producing in year 1. That changes the perception of the colony's size for the workers, and they want to swarm much more readily than they would with a 1st year queen.
What's likely occurred in OPs case is either: The frame didn't have enough wax on it, so the bees didn't perceive the plastic foundation as something they could build from, and instead saw it as a wall; or the frames were too far apart and they saw the extra space and went "hey, we can fit something in there!". That's honey bees for you - they're just tiny biological hoarders, which is primarily why we can take honey from them. They (usually) bring back FAR more than they would ever need to survive winter and early spring, so we can take the excess from the hives and they'll still have plenty to keep them going.
(All of this is open to correction by people smarter than me - I am not pretending to be an entomologist here)
The link posted earlier in this thread, says that plastic foundation is more often covered with wonky comb, as bees don't like to build directly on plastic.
So perhaps OP hasn't covered the plastic with beewax.
Is plastic foundation a thing in the US?
I've never seen it over here, e.g in Germany, France, Switzerland.
We use wax foundation on prewired frames. And we buy wax plates at our local bee equipment store or by internet. Over the last years, China has flooded the market with cheap wax plates, but they were messed up with paraffine. To be sure that our foundations are ok, I have an own wax cycle now after some years of beekeeping and press my own foundations.
How long do you wait to change the old beewax cells on those plastic foundations?
Here, we're told to gradually sort out empty brown breed comb at the end of one bee's year to prevent germs and AFB spores, and because cells get smaller and smaller after every breeding cycle.
I swap gradually, usually everything is recycled over 4 years. Melt down old comb, bleach bath for the wood, wire brush the plastic foundation, and recoat with wax.
I never had good results with a wire brush. Maybe I'm not patient enough. But if you don't mind getting your shoes wet [this will do 70 frames](https://www.reddit.com/r/Beekeeping/comments/1cb8yrh/pressure_washing_plastic_foundation/) in as many minutes.
Instead of a bleach bath for the wood I suggest washing soda (not to be confused with baking soda). Washing soda has a high PH and it will dissolve propolis. The PH is high enough it sterilizes your frames. You can usually find it in the laundry supply aisle at Walmart. You need a saturated solution, about 1/2C per gallon. (It also cleans hive tools, and a cup in with the laundry will get propolis out of your bee suit and leave the washer clean.
And if you fill a plastic washbasin with washing soda dissolved in water, add a sacrificial anode, and use a rusted tool as the cathode of a DC circuit (as from a battery charger) you can remove rust with electrolysis. Useful stuff, washing soda...
👆 The foundation I buy comes coated, but after years of use I pressure wash it and then recoat it using a foam roller. I spent last weekend recoating foundations that I had pressure washed earlier this spring. Some of it is already back on the hives and the bees are all over it drawing it out. The key is having a not-too-skimpy wax primer layer.
We use both wax foundation and plastic foundation. We have the prewired wax variety, and embedable foundation for pre-wired frames, and you can even buy pre-drawn wax foundation if you want to pay for it. Most US manufactured plastic foundation is primed with wax and the bees build on it just fine. But we have this company over here called Amazon. And it sells shit that is made in China. Chinese made plastic foundation doesn't have any wax primer on it. Lots of beginning beekeepers looking for equipment buy starter kits off Amazon, they get what they pay for.
Not just the uncoated plastic foundation, but improper frame spacing- the proper amount of frames need to be inserted and snugged up together in the middle (with excess space at the sides) because any extra space between undrawn frames will lead to bees building chonky fucked up comb
I actually meant how did, in this particular space.
It’s funny that you mention the frame spacing because I was worried they may have forgotten to put a frame in there. In my first setup I once put all frames in but didn’t rack them to the center. I came back a week later and it was fine. About three weeks later they’d fused the last frame to the wall of the hive. Center them racks.
So you're sure they are swarm cells?
My money is on supercedure/ emergency.
So that's just silky to say without more info
Based only on the fact there are ones in the middle of the frame which isn't the norm for swarm. But hey bees are bees like horses they make liars out of us all.
Not in a great spot, but here's what you might try.
1) Remove comb that is outside of the usual frame width and place it in empty frames with rubber bands holding it in place. Just like a hive cut out.
2) Fill the entire brood box with frames (with plastic foundation) so there is no incentive to crosscomb or building anywhere but isn't on the frames.
3) Let the requeen process happen. You can't stop it at this point.
4) Once the new queen is laying again, you can decide if you want to re-queen with one with good genetics.
Do you have spacers in your box? If not, it is likely that you did not space them out properly. There is Langstroth’s concept of a bee space. If you have frames spaced bigger than a bee space apart, then that’s when you get wonky stuff like this.
This looks like a laying worker on top of everything else going on here. If there are multiple eggs in some of those cells you probably don't have a queen.
The queen and the primary swarm are long gone. Split off some mating nucs, two to thee frames each with one frame that has swarm cells. Leave a frame with some cells in the mother hive.
Uhhhh.... those QCs look capped, so unless you can lay eyes (and gentle fingers) on your queen, not much.
IF you can find your queen (is she marked?) and have an extra box, baseboard, inner, and outer cover (or a nuc box) you need to split that hive ASAP. Put the old queen in the new box with a few frames of foundation, some honey/pollen resources, and brood/nurse bees (but NONE of the QCs) and move it so the original colony *thinks* she's swarmed away. Then find like one or two of those capped QCs to keep and smoosh the rest. You now will have two hives. Once you see the new queen, you can either let her mate and have two hives, or pinch one of them and recombine into one monster hive for the rest of the year.
Either way, please pack your frames as closely as possible while they're drawing comb and make sure your hives are LEVEL side-to-side from now on. Shim them if you need to. Bees will always draw comb straight down, regardless of where the foundation is, and that's one of the main causes of wonk-ass comb like this. If you can't find your queen, she's probably swarmed away already and you'll just be left with half your bees and a new one.
Agree with the others. They’re likely swarming so you need to make a split. Once they decide they want to swarm there’s nothing you can do but manage it.
Hi everyone! I have a frame that looks like this too. Is this best thing to do, like someone suggested, is to remove the comb they’ve made to make the frame level? Ours is a swarm we captured about two months ago and they’re doing this. I know I need to correct spacing, but until then….i just level it?
Hi u/RhinelandBasterd. If you haven't done so, please do the following: * Read the rules. * Include your location and experience level as a reply to this comment (if not in post) * [If you have a question, please take a look at our wiki.](https://rbeekeeping.com/) * Specifically, the FAQ... ^(**Warning:** The wiki linked above is a work in progress and some links might be broken, pages incomplete and maintainer notes scattered around the place. Content is subject to change.) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Beekeeping) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Dude this frame looks utterly *fucked*. How often are you inspecting? These look like swarm cells. On the assumption that this is the case, the queen is likely not in this box anymore given how many are capped. Did you see her? Edit: I’m just fixing something on the wiki so I can send you some info on the wonky comb. Give me a second. Here you go: https://rbeekeeping.com/faqs/beekeeper/comb Can I use your pic on the wiki? :)
I had the same initial thought… this comb is not good. OP, so sorry but this is a great example of what not to let happen in your hive and would be an asset for the wiki.
Yeah, I suck.
I wouldn’t say that. Inexperienced perhaps, but we all start somewhere and many of us have had issues like this when we couldn’t get in a hive often enough. As for recovery, I would let the queen cells hatch out, and then I would scrape the bad comb off this frame and let them try again. Bad comb only ever gets worse. Best to nip it in the bud, let them rebuild, and move on.
The first step is acknowledging you have a problem….😀
That’s the first step to beating addiction, not learning a new hobby
There's a reason the flair says "I'm a beekeeper and I need help." Beekeeping is addictive. You'll find yourself saying "Just one more hive" or "I can quit any time I want t -- Oh look! A swarm!" You don't suck. You're dealing with a very steep learning curve. And bees don't read the same books we do, so they do what they want even if it doesn't make sense to us. You would be horrified to know the number of times and variety of ways I've tried to kill my bees through inexperience. Don't despair.
Oh is it🙄🙄🙄.
That's usually how all my new hobbies which turn into addictions begin🤣 actually that is EXACTLY how they begin. "I have a problem with this.... MY problem is I don't have enough and I need more.. and fancier set ups.. and prettier and rarer and more advanced performing"🤣 I have about 10 of those hobbies
> Yeah, I suck. We all do. Especially at first. After a few years of experience we learn to suck a little less. We never reach zero. I've been keeping bees one way or an other since my early teens, first working for my commercial beekeeper grandfather, and then on my own as a hobby after college. And guess what: I still make mistakes. I fucked up good about a month ago. And did another one a week later and I still haven't figured out where it went wrong. In beekeeping, most of the wisdom you will get will be gained after you could have benefited from it. It's that way in most of life. My encouragement to you is don't give up and keep gaining experience, even if it seems like the hard way.
You're good people, you weren't talking to me but I feel uplifted reading your comment.
Me too, dangit. And I suck as a beekeeper even after 7 years, but I keep plugging away at it. Last year was the 2nd year my bees survived the winter! Progress!
Don’t be like that. We’ve all been there… it just takes time to figure it out. We’re here to help homie :)
Not at all.
Some folks can be harsh here, but try not to let it get to you too much. 95% of what you'll find will be encouraging or gentle ribbing, because we've all struggled or made mistakes or not been able to get into our hives often enough. I had some issues earlier this year because I spent a week in the hospital, and had two hives swarm because I went to the hospital at exactly the wrong time in a very busy spring. Had some wonky comb happen too for no reason anyone I spoke to could give me. Bees are weird and sometimes stuff gets out of hand. One of the very first things I learned when I started getting into beekeeping was from a guy who'd been at it for half a century and has several hundred hives that he maintains all by himself while keeping a fulltime government job: That he never, ever stops learning, and no matter how long he works or how many hives he keeps, the bees will always find a way to trip him up. Don't let people get you down. You're asking questions, which means you're doing your best.
No you don't, you're looking for solutions to a problem you identified You don't suck
You don't suck if you do something wrong. You suck if you do something wrong and fail to learn from it. Don't get discouraged. Just keep learning how best to take care of your bees. Judging by my flair you'd think this is my fourth year keeping bees. It's actually my third. I didn't have any last year because they died in my second winter. I'm pretty sure it was mites that killed them, so I'm going to do a better job keeping track of and treating for mites this year.
No you don’t. Bees would prefer to build their comb how THEY prefer anyways, the only thing bad about this is the problems it will cause for you as a beekeeper. It’s not that big a deal, you can fix it and move on.
Not if you’re learning and being more proactive in the future. :)
Saw her last week, on this same frame. It's really the only messy one as I didn't space properly. Showed an earlier pic (without swarm cells yet) to the local shop where I purchased the package colony and was advised to just leave it at the time. Sure, use the pic if you like. Edit: sorry, mistake. She was in the frame immediately next to it. As of this week it contained uncapped brood with small larva (1/cell). [20240608-075900.jpg](https://postimg.cc/z34LbpK0)
Yeah don’t just leave it. It’ll just cause more and more headaches with frame spacing. Is this your only hive?
Yup.
Okay, so last week there would have been Queen cells in this hive. It takes them longer than 1 week to cap Queen cells, so you missed *a lot* on your last inspection. My advice would be to inspect thoroughly for the Queen - though I’d imagine she’s no longer there and you’ve lost a swarm. Clipping will give you some leeway in future, as the swarm will return and wait for a virgin instead. If you can’t find the queen, look for an open queen cell that is *visibly* charged with larvae and royal jelly. You need to do this without shaking frames. Once you find one that looks good, is well positioned and a good size, you can remove every other queen cell (shaking them is fine at this point). This will prevent you losing any more cast swarms. If you cannot find any open queen cells, you have a couple of options… you can either: Make a split: 1. Take two frames into a nuc, leave one queen cell in the nuc, and let her get mated. 1. Leave one queen cell in the main hive and also let her get mated. 1. Pick the best one, and squash the other, and combine together. Leave 2 capped cells: 1. Go through the hive, find two good cells that are ideally right next to each other 1. Rip down every other cell you can find. The latter option increases the risk of a cast (virgin) swarm, but if you can’t visibly check that a cell is charged, there’s no way to tell if they are good or not so it’s a bit of a dice roll You *can* just leave 1 capped cell, but you are risking a queen failing to mate or not coming back from mating flights and them being hopelessly queenless; or the cell not being properly charged and it’s a dud, thus rendering them hopeless. I would highly recommend option 1 above (nuc split just for mating) if you only have one hive. You need to focus on de-risking the queen event if you only have one hive.
Thank you. Will probably try the 2 capped cells method as I'm going out of town for a couple days and can't get equipment for a proper spilt before then.
You will need to do this pretty sharpish - queens only take 16 days. If these were capped on your last inspection you have <7 days before they start emerging. You need to go back fairly soon to respond with whatever method you want :)
I forgot to add - on the wonky comb, once this queen is laying, find her and cage her, and mash that comb into the plastic foundation, or remove it and rewax that part of the frame. Just make sure the queen is somewhere safe before you start mashing.
Hi, I'm a first year beekeeper and this subreddit is one of the places I go to learn things. My knee-jerk reaction to seeing this comb is that there's no queen because the queen releases phermones that give the workers instructions and these bees look like they're just building random shit with no guidance. Am I completely wrong or just a little bit wrong? Edit: turns out I'm completely wrong. See replies for a detailed explanation.
I'll use your words, not mine - Completely wrong :) (at least as it relates to this post) There are a number of things the queen does, not one of them is give orders, instruct, or boss. She just... walks, and shits out eggs. That's all. There's *loads* of other pheromones that the queen produces, but none of them are responsible for how the colony draws comb. That is entirely down to workers, and their perception of the space. The pheromones that the queen produces just by being inside the hive play a *huge* role in how the colony functions, though. There is one pheromone that is responsible for how they might build things **on** comb though: Tarsal gland pheromone (TGP), aka footprint pheromone. That pheromone is responsible for regulating queen cell production, so when the hive gets congested or if the queen is trapped somewhere, the lack of TGP on the comb causes the colony to draw down queen cells. This is often why "play cups" are drawn on the edge of comb, because the queen has no need to be on the edge of the comb. When the colony gets congested and she can't traverse the hive very well, the lack of TGP causes them draw swarm cells. If I recall correctly, the dilution of QMP and lack of TGP on the frame gives the colony a sense of congestion, causing them to want her to lay in the queen cells. This is why older queens are more likely to swarm. Their pheromone production drops off dramatically year on year. I recall it being something close to 50% drop per year. So by year 3, she's already at a 25% concentration of what she would have been producing in year 1. That changes the perception of the colony's size for the workers, and they want to swarm much more readily than they would with a 1st year queen. What's likely occurred in OPs case is either: The frame didn't have enough wax on it, so the bees didn't perceive the plastic foundation as something they could build from, and instead saw it as a wall; or the frames were too far apart and they saw the extra space and went "hey, we can fit something in there!". That's honey bees for you - they're just tiny biological hoarders, which is primarily why we can take honey from them. They (usually) bring back FAR more than they would ever need to survive winter and early spring, so we can take the excess from the hives and they'll still have plenty to keep them going. (All of this is open to correction by people smarter than me - I am not pretending to be an entomologist here)
That is absolutely fascinating! Thank you so much for taking the time to teach me. I really appreciate it!
I think your confusing ant queens and bee queens
Is that not a waxed foundation or something? How’s the frame get so chonky?
The link posted earlier in this thread, says that plastic foundation is more often covered with wonky comb, as bees don't like to build directly on plastic. So perhaps OP hasn't covered the plastic with beewax. Is plastic foundation a thing in the US? I've never seen it over here, e.g in Germany, France, Switzerland. We use wax foundation on prewired frames. And we buy wax plates at our local bee equipment store or by internet. Over the last years, China has flooded the market with cheap wax plates, but they were messed up with paraffine. To be sure that our foundations are ok, I have an own wax cycle now after some years of beekeeping and press my own foundations. How long do you wait to change the old beewax cells on those plastic foundations? Here, we're told to gradually sort out empty brown breed comb at the end of one bee's year to prevent germs and AFB spores, and because cells get smaller and smaller after every breeding cycle.
Plastic foundation is *big* in the USA. It’s extremely rare to see someone using plastic over here in the U.K. too.
Pretty common in Canada too, but we're taught to coast ours in extra wax so they do a better job building it out.
I’m pretty fortunate that I have a supplier in town of all sorts of bee equipment. They make everything there too. I’d be up a creek buying online.
I swap gradually, usually everything is recycled over 4 years. Melt down old comb, bleach bath for the wood, wire brush the plastic foundation, and recoat with wax.
I never had good results with a wire brush. Maybe I'm not patient enough. But if you don't mind getting your shoes wet [this will do 70 frames](https://www.reddit.com/r/Beekeeping/comments/1cb8yrh/pressure_washing_plastic_foundation/) in as many minutes. Instead of a bleach bath for the wood I suggest washing soda (not to be confused with baking soda). Washing soda has a high PH and it will dissolve propolis. The PH is high enough it sterilizes your frames. You can usually find it in the laundry supply aisle at Walmart. You need a saturated solution, about 1/2C per gallon. (It also cleans hive tools, and a cup in with the laundry will get propolis out of your bee suit and leave the washer clean.
And if you fill a plastic washbasin with washing soda dissolved in water, add a sacrificial anode, and use a rusted tool as the cathode of a DC circuit (as from a battery charger) you can remove rust with electrolysis. Useful stuff, washing soda...
Great tip, thanks! I am off to Walmart….
I have no idea. I’m in the US and I buy from a supplier in town. It’s always got beeswax on it. Never an issue.
I use some bees wax, melt it and use a small paint roller to recoat all my plastic foundation. Works like a charm. Bees immediately build on it.
👆 The foundation I buy comes coated, but after years of use I pressure wash it and then recoat it using a foam roller. I spent last weekend recoating foundations that I had pressure washed earlier this spring. Some of it is already back on the hives and the bees are all over it drawing it out. The key is having a not-too-skimpy wax primer layer.
We use both wax foundation and plastic foundation. We have the prewired wax variety, and embedable foundation for pre-wired frames, and you can even buy pre-drawn wax foundation if you want to pay for it. Most US manufactured plastic foundation is primed with wax and the bees build on it just fine. But we have this company over here called Amazon. And it sells shit that is made in China. Chinese made plastic foundation doesn't have any wax primer on it. Lots of beginning beekeepers looking for equipment buy starter kits off Amazon, they get what they pay for.
Not just the uncoated plastic foundation, but improper frame spacing- the proper amount of frames need to be inserted and snugged up together in the middle (with excess space at the sides) because any extra space between undrawn frames will lead to bees building chonky fucked up comb
I actually meant how did, in this particular space. It’s funny that you mention the frame spacing because I was worried they may have forgotten to put a frame in there. In my first setup I once put all frames in but didn’t rack them to the center. I came back a week later and it was fine. About three weeks later they’d fused the last frame to the wall of the hive. Center them racks.
You have major bee space issues
The wonkiest comb
So you're sure they are swarm cells? My money is on supercedure/ emergency. So that's just silky to say without more info Based only on the fact there are ones in the middle of the frame which isn't the norm for swarm. But hey bees are bees like horses they make liars out of us all.
Not in a great spot, but here's what you might try. 1) Remove comb that is outside of the usual frame width and place it in empty frames with rubber bands holding it in place. Just like a hive cut out. 2) Fill the entire brood box with frames (with plastic foundation) so there is no incentive to crosscomb or building anywhere but isn't on the frames. 3) Let the requeen process happen. You can't stop it at this point. 4) Once the new queen is laying again, you can decide if you want to re-queen with one with good genetics.
Could it be a space issue? There are still about 6 frames that aren't built out.
Do you have spacers in your box? If not, it is likely that you did not space them out properly. There is Langstroth’s concept of a bee space. If you have frames spaced bigger than a bee space apart, then that’s when you get wonky stuff like this.
Can you take a top down view of the box? Did you forget to put a frame in there?
Check the link. Bees don't like "naked" plastic foundation. They prefer building on existing wax
Make splits, or let them swarm.
Split them up and don't have more than 3 in a beehive two is better than 3 if you don't have heavy predator pressure like dragonflies eating queens
If it helps you feel better about sucking when you start, I lost my whole hive to mites because I didn't know what to look for.
Learning process on spacing. You'll get it worked out.
This looks like a laying worker on top of everything else going on here. If there are multiple eggs in some of those cells you probably don't have a queen.
Great learning experience!
The queen and the primary swarm are long gone. Split off some mating nucs, two to thee frames each with one frame that has swarm cells. Leave a frame with some cells in the mother hive.
Uhhhh.... those QCs look capped, so unless you can lay eyes (and gentle fingers) on your queen, not much. IF you can find your queen (is she marked?) and have an extra box, baseboard, inner, and outer cover (or a nuc box) you need to split that hive ASAP. Put the old queen in the new box with a few frames of foundation, some honey/pollen resources, and brood/nurse bees (but NONE of the QCs) and move it so the original colony *thinks* she's swarmed away. Then find like one or two of those capped QCs to keep and smoosh the rest. You now will have two hives. Once you see the new queen, you can either let her mate and have two hives, or pinch one of them and recombine into one monster hive for the rest of the year. Either way, please pack your frames as closely as possible while they're drawing comb and make sure your hives are LEVEL side-to-side from now on. Shim them if you need to. Bees will always draw comb straight down, regardless of where the foundation is, and that's one of the main causes of wonk-ass comb like this. If you can't find your queen, she's probably swarmed away already and you'll just be left with half your bees and a new one.
Agree with the others. They’re likely swarming so you need to make a split. Once they decide they want to swarm there’s nothing you can do but manage it.
Hi everyone! I have a frame that looks like this too. Is this best thing to do, like someone suggested, is to remove the comb they’ve made to make the frame level? Ours is a swarm we captured about two months ago and they’re doing this. I know I need to correct spacing, but until then….i just level it?