A sticky situation

At Bee School we were taught that Bee's were inherently sticky characters i.e. they like to stick things together and fill in gaps and spaces wherever possible, to my disadvantage I found this to be quite true. Memorial Monday arrived and the weather held out well for most of the weekend with only a slight shower of rain last night.

Late on Monday afternoon there was a gentle breeze and the sun was still warming the hive. I decided it was a great time to change over the feeder I'd previously put on top the hive, and also have a take a quick inspection inside the new hive to see how the Bee's were doing in their new home. Most of all I was eager to see if the Bees had begun to draw out wax onto the new frames. I was both mildly shocked and pleasantly surprised by what I found.

I lifted off the top cover from the hive and removed the feeder. The feeder was now empty and the Bees were still mopping up the remnants of the sugar syrup.

I blew a little smoke into the entrance and also under the edge of the crown board as I decided to lift it off. The Bee's had largely stuck the crown board down with wax and it didn’t make the usually snapping sound it would if they had glued it with Propolis.

As I lifted the crown board, the board felt unusually heavy, so much so, I could not lift the board off the hive. I thought it best to approach the situation carefully and inspect what I could. I lifted the board up 1/4 inch on one side and partially inserted an entrance reducer I had laying around, I lifted the other side with a hive tool and propped it up in the same way.

Now I could clearly see what my problem was, the bees in their resilience to build comb had constructed comb between the top of the frames and the crown board. Thus every time I lifted the crown board, two or three frames would lift with it.

Surprisingly the jostling back and forth didn't bother the bee's much and with some careful placement I managed to slide a spare hive tool under the crown board to slowly prize off each of the frames.

Finally I got to inspect the new frames. The bee's had only just started drawing out wax on these, so I thought it best to leave them alone for now and let them get on with their work. I replaced the jar of sugar syrup with a nice fresh batch and I closed up shop for the night.

As a final experiment for the day (bee's are fun to experiment with) I took all the wax I scraped off and made it into a patti. I placed this at the hive entrance, I now plan to leave it for a week to see if the bee's recycle it, although within a few minutes of placing it I could see them begin to come and break it down.