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The Bees are on! 

What happens now with bees? 

The bee season is LIVE in Southern Africa! [southern hemisphere apiaries] What does this mean for your bees?

Everything is More!     
The queen bee is laying 1500 -2000 eggs a day! She is an amazing creature that will produce off spring to take full advantage of the recent rains in South Africa along with the Spring blossom all around us. 

How can you help? Ensure that you have serviced your brood chambers by inspecting them for old dark brown or even black comb. The queen can only lay in comb that is suitable. 

For it to be suitable she must be able to drop the eggs off at the bottom of the cell in the brood frame comb. After many days, weeks and months of repeatedly laying eggs the cell capacity declines over time. Once this happens, the queen can no longer utilise the cell to lay eggs in and then the worker bees will start filling the cells with honey. The darker the comb is the older it is. The less likely the queen to lay in it. 

The solution: Service your colonies now. This entails opening up the brood chambers and inspecting each frame inside. Pay careful attention to frames with very dark brown or even almost black comb. This frame requires servicing and maintenance. To do so, remove the entire frame and if you can, replace it with a fresh spare frame with some wax strip on it or a wax sheet. 

The alternative is to close the brood chamber and brush off any straggling bees at the entrance of the hive and then leave the area. You then need to remove the comb that is old and full of honey. It is very likely to be capped as well. This comb is perfectly edible and so is the honey. Cut the comb along the top wire so as to leave about 2cm of comb on the frame. The bees will use this as their building guide so you will not need to use a wax strip to start over. (You could however remove everything and then place wax strip in its place. This does carry an expense.)

Have your honey and eat it! 

Eat the beautiful honey and melt the beeswax from the comb. Then replace the frame as soon as possible. Bees do not take long to build in an empty space inside the hive. No longer than 48 hours and your removed frame should be replaced inside the hive from which it came with no comb besides the upper 2cm strip left behind- if you went that route. 

Now the queen will produce the full capacity she can at her whim and our wonder! 

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