I have learned much this year, but wanted to pass along some observations from my recent combine. I had a devastating flood that darned near wiped out the apiary. I managed to reconstruct hives, but in retrospect did a poor job. I did a combine over the weekend and found that the hive I thought was strong was incredibly weak. It experienced the flood, and many frames had silt on the foundation (mostly PF-100). In the heat of the recovery, this was hard to know as I rescued many frames floating with bees in back waters of the flood. They managed to salvage a queen and stay alive thought the summer, but they never build on dirty foundation. They did build some comb over the dirt and built a bee space between the frame and the comb, but little comb was used this way. I could not locate the queen in either of the hives I combined, despite having both open for over 30 minutes. Ultimately I sprayed them all with sugar syrup, put both hives together while taking out the flood affected frames, and hoped for the best in the battle of the queens that I knew would ensue. I feel like I failed, but I saw no options. Without a combine, both would die. I can only hope that my first combine doesnot wind up with two dead queens. I will absolutely re-queen next spring should this hive survive.
Topic: Dirty Frames (Read 1257 times)