I have uploaded a new video to YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Thanks to my cousin-in-law, Ivan, for accompanying me out to the bee yard last week. Although we didn’t see the queen, we got some nice close-up shots of my hive and bees.
This video shows a problem that I encountered during the inspection: One of my unwired wax foundation frames had collapsed. I’m not sure whether it was due to the fact that I forgot to push the frames tightly together when I added the new box, or because of the warm weather we’ve had around here lately.
I had to trim out the comb that was causing problems. Was this the best way to handle the problem? I’m not sure. What do you think? I’d love to know how other people would deal with this.
Great video! I would have done the exact same thing as you did here. Actually I have done this before with some comb which the bees drew out kind of wonky. It wasn’t as much as yours but it was still off that if I left it probably would have grown into a mess.
Fascinating!
Hard to prevent on unwired foundation. Looks like it got heavy and they hadnt drawn all the way across the top. As a fix, you can use elastic bands wrapped around the frame I center the comb, or fine string wrapped around. Similar to what guys do when they perform a “cutout” and want to save the old comb.
In the future, you can embed wires horizontally. Some use fishing line instead of metal wire. There are also “support pins”, but I’ve never used those.
I embed wire on my wired and unwired foundation. It just makes life so much easier.