My eco solution to rat problems

[Gills_Hive]

My friend and I have had a nuc in our Beehaus since the end of May. It was delivered by our lovely friends from our local BKA. They have only kept bees in normal hives and we are novices. Consequently we didn't realise about filling in under the shorter frames to prevent extension (wish this had been advised in the Omlet guide book). Our bees are doing famously well but getting the frames out to inspect is quite difficult now as they've extended down and across and laid brood, stored honey etc. Can anyone advise what we should do about the bits on the bottom? We'd hate to waste it. The bees have moved into another three full sized frames too and the queen and new bees are yellow - very pretty!

[Guest]

These days 14 x 12 frames are quite common. I run all my colonies on that size frame.

 

By next year that comb could well be due for renewal (may be into it's third year, so definitely time for a change).

 

The most usual thing is to get them on the larger frames and discard (recycle) the originals.

 

BTW was this wild comb mostly worker brood or mostly drone brood?

 

One frame can be retained for drone culling as part of IPM for varroa.

 

I find little difficulty in removing frames in my Dartingtons - I just slide them forward then lift them out. But I suppose the book supplied does not indicate operating the 'Dartington way'.

 

The hive is simply a plastic Dartington LDH; they, and similar types, have been in use for 'many-a-year' and operation horizontally is simple and very basic. The one thing my Dartingtons don't have is that annoying hump half way along the frame runners, so no probem at all to slide frames along the runners before removal (there being sooo much space in front of the brood nest). KISS principal in operation there!

 

Regards, RAB

[thedruggist]

I had the same problem. I have a Beehaus and standard frames supplied with nuc. What I've been doing is to gradually push the standard frames to the outside edges of the hive so that is where they seem to be storing honey/nectar as opposed to filling it with brood. I then removed the standard frames, substituting the 14x12s with foundation on them.

 

I then extract the honey/nectar and pollen from the old frames and feed it back to them later when the forage ain't so good.

 

Like RAB says, it's worthwhile leaving one short frame in there, in the outside edge of the normal brood area (if that makes sense) to encourage drone brood in the wild comb underneath to be culled to control varroa etc.

 

Tony

[Guest]

I purposely didn't say leave a short frame in there. I said 'retain'. The best place for it is behind the divider until needed as one does not want them needlessly drawing drone comb all the time.

 

RAB