Author Topic: Can someone tell me what is happening here? (pics Added) (Read 3130 times)

Wombat2 · « **on:** July 21, 2014, 02:19:57 am »

Although it is winter and we have had some cold nights the days have been sunny and the bees are active - they are still filling comb but not as fast. I leave them with 9 full frames in the top super at all times and keep removing frames from the middle super and replace them with stickies - the bees keep filling them. The middle super is actually two half deep that I am slowing changing to full deep last visit a month ago the girls had more than a half of 4 half frames uncapped so I moved then to the side and put them two over two.

Today they were fully capped so I pulled them out and replaced them with full deep stickies - I also got another full frame out as well.

When I came to extract (manually by spraping out with a spoon and a square ended BBQ tool) two of the half frames had a very dark semicircle along the bottom edge. The capping/cells had irregular ridges across the top. Some looked like they had brood caps but only honey inside the honey was very dark but there was lumpy areas that didn't appear to be crystallised honey more like wax, at first I thought it was mummified insects but under a magnifiying glass it looks more pulpy and in layers. The wax of the cells was also stained brown by the dark honey - would this be just some odd plant they have been working? I have seen honey that is almos black that came off sugar cane but we don't have any growing nearby.