So I'm typing this ( and watching the Tennis at Queens) with a fatter than usual index finger and it smarts - but mainly because I can't bend it properly to type ! :(
Some back story to set the scene:
Our apiary manager had been called in to deal with a swarm and discovered that the source of the problem seemed to be a pile of old bee keeping equipment from an x-bee keeper who had given up some 12+ years ago. Most of the old hive pieces were completely rotten and some adventurous bees had found their way into the corner of a rotten box and figured it was a good place to start a home....
So he'd gathered up the hive pieces where the bees seemed to be and after quarantining them in a separate apiary for a few weeks had brought them to the teaching apiary to hive them and see what we'd got. Today's lesson - cutting naturally formed wax out of a hive and tying it into a newer frames to put into a hive.
Step one: Set the new brood box up on a brand new stand and crack open the old hive (a darned site easier said than done)
Firstly we were greeted by a lot of drones on a very propolised crown board and a wiggling wax moth caterpillar - ugh!
But what a sight awaited us! The bees had filled the box with wax comb - with natural bee spaces and judging by the colour - had been doing so for quite some time! (brood comb - where the Queen lays eggs starts off white and goes yellow, then brown over time as each subsequent hatching grub leaves a little bit of pupa behind in the cell. Anyone want to guess how many times these cells had been used?
We set this box aside and prized our way into the second. The bees seem to have organised themselves to treat this second box as a "super", - lots of fresh pale wax most of which was full of wet stores - new nectar that they were storing and evaporating to make honey...
So now all we had to do was cut the comb out of the box and tie it into the new hive - Simples!
Or NOT ! as the case may be !!
Then someone had the great idea of breaking the sides off the box - we didn't need or want to re-use it so it, as it was already mostly rotten, it should be fairly easy to break apart...
So ..time to cut it out...piece by piece and look for the queen...... are we all ready? because its surprisingly heavy and you have to catch the pieces as they topple over from being cut....
Right in the middle is where most of the bees are so its just a case of shaking the bees off the comb into that new hive we set up (right at the top of this page).
And that was exactly the start of my downfall ! Shaking bees off open stores is messy work and it was a matter of seconds before my hands were covered with honey and then of course a few bees came along to drink it back up. They'd worked so hard to collect it of course it shouldn't have gone to waste so I can't really blame them for scavenging.....however the little blighter that stung me....well....she was a rotter...'cos it really REALLY hurt! :(
Then to add insult to injury the battery ran out on the camera so you will have to wait a while longer for me to tell you the end of the story 'cos I need to beg the photos from our other photographer...
That's all for today folks!
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