Storing Honey Supers

Some beekeepers say that their greatest beekeeping asset is their frames of drawn comb. It takes considerable time and resources of carbohydrates for the bees to produce honeycomb. The comb is produced by young bees that secrete beeswax from glands on the lower side of their abdomen. To produce beeswax, the bees must consume a large volume of honey. To make an ounce of beeswax, the bees eat about a pound of honey. Teams of worker bees take the flakes of fresh beeswax and build honeycomb while forming bridges with their bodies across open spaces in the hive, an act called festooning. Using their mouthparts, the bees shape the flakes of beeswax into sheets of six-sided, back-to-back cells. Beekeepers typically place foundation, either formed from beeswax or plastic, in frames to serve as the mid-rib for the bees to build their honeycomb. Depending upon the population of bees and the strength of the nectar flow, it may take the bees an entire year to draw out their honeycombs. The beekeeper may aid the bees by feeding syrup as a supplementary carbohydrate. Once the bees have drawn the beeswax into honeycomb, they are ready to fill it with honey.

After the beekeeper harvests the surplus honey, the frames need to be cleaned of any residue of honey and then stored over winter so that the bees can fill the comb with honey the following year. If the supers of “wet” frames are stacked outdoors, honey bees in the area will remove all traces of honey and take it back to their hives. The supers can then be stored over winter. Stacking clean supers so that air flows through them usually prevents wax moth damage if the frames never held brood. If frames that held brood need to be stored, they need to be protected from wax moths by stacking tightly and covering. Use PDB moth crystals to kill wax moths. Today’s photo: supers stored to allow air to flow through the frames.

--Richard

Honey Bees Festoon

When honey bees build their comb, they work in teams. The teams of bees often festoon, or hang together to bridge open spaces in the hive. They are able to use their own bodies to bridge across areas by holding hands, of sorts, with other bees. The six legs of honey bees actually have pads and hooks. Each leg has a pair of hooks which they can use to hold onto another bee’s hooks. Using their bodies as a natural scaffolding arrangement, the bees build their nest out of beeswax which the young bees secrete from glands located on their lower abdomen. They take the secreted flakes of beeswax and make them into six sided cells using their mouth parts. Photographer and beekeeper Brandon Dill photographed these honey bees festooned across an opening in a bee hive. Click on the picture to see some real honey bee acrobatics. The hive opening resulted from my pulling out a frame of honey comb for inspection. Had I not returned the frame, the bees would have filled the area with a sheet of comb.

The honey bee uses its ability to hang together for a number of purposes. When bees swarm, they gather together in a mass of thousands of bees. As the swarm hangs onto a tree limb, they are festooned bee to bee by the hooks on the ends of their legs. Another time that bees festoon is when they hang out of the entrance of the hive in warm weather. Large numbers of bees can festoon outside of the hive to allow ventilation of the brood nest. You may see more of Brandon’s photographic work at http://www.brandondillphotography.com/.
--Richard

Building Honey Comb

The honey bee builds its own nest out of beeswax that the young bees secrete from glands on the lower side of their abdomen. Flakes of beeswax are secreted after the bees eat honey. For the bees to produce an ounce of beeswax, they must consume one pound of honey. For the bees to produce that pound of honey they must fly a combined distance of 55 thousand miles and visit two million flowers. That distance is more than twice the distance around the world at the equator. To accomplish the building of the brood nest, it is necessary to have a significant nectar flow from the flowering plants surrounding the bee hive.

Some of the honey bee colonies that we started in the spring have expanded their brood nest to fill two medium-size hive boxes and are now building the honey comb to occupy a third box. If you click on the picture, you can see the bees in the process of drawing out the beeswax to make the six-sided honey comb cells. The bees work together to fashion the flakes of beeswax into cells by starting at the top frame bar and working their way downward. In the picture, you can see bees in the lower half of the frame manipulating beeswax to draw out the comb. The beeswax of new honey comb is bright and white. The bees in the upper half of the frame are filling the newly completed cells with honey. Here, we see a strong colony drawing out perfect frames of honey comb during a good nectar flow.
--Richard