At the end of the beekeeping season we are left with stacks of supers containing anything from extracted frames, wet or dry, to frames with partially drawn comb, foundation, pollen, drone cells, and crystallized honey from brassica or ivy. Not seldom will you also find frames where the bees have built comb parallel to the sheet of wax, or at a 90-degree angle, and foundation and drawn comb with holes in them. If you think this sounds like a handful, brace yourself. We have not even got to the old brood frames yet.
Sorting Old Brood Frames
The very best of the brood frames are usually left in the hives over winter, leaving us to deal with those that are:
Wet from extraction and good enough for reuse next season
Frames from dead colonies
Frames that were taken out of colonies throughout the year as part of the process of wax renewal. (Those frames are often dirty, black, bee-bread laden, green-hued and brittle, wax moth infested, or just stink.)
Thrown into the mix are typically also a few frames with foundation rejected by the bees and a couple of frames hanging together by the grace of God, two wonky nails and a good deal of propolis. Hardly textbook picture and not one bit pleasant to deal with. But dealt with they shall be. And before the beekeeping season begins is the very best time to do it.
So, read this, roll up your sleeves and get on with it. Come spring, you will thank yourself for having done it. You will have well organised boxes of nice healthy comb and foundation to put onto your colonies. No dirty combs, no stink, no mess, and no wax moth!
N.B. Some, but not all, of what is contained in this article presupposes that your brood and super frames are of different sizes and thus not interchangeable. If you operate a system whereby you have the same frame sizes for brood and supers, chances are you already have developed methods for wax renewal and circulation as such a system makes it easier to move frames between brood and supers.
Best Practice: Replace Brood Wax Annually
The wax in the brood chamber should be renewed annually or as part of a two- or three-year rotation, where a portion of the wax is replaced each year. Fresh, clean wax in the brood chamber leads to healthier bees and less pathogen build-up in the wax.
Another reason to be diligent in renewing the wax in the brood chamber is that for each brood cycle parts of the cocoon and faeces are left behind in the cell and are not cleaned out by the house bees. This means that the cell is gradually becoming smaller, which in turn leads to the emerging bee being smaller.
Brood frames can be replaced using a number of different methods, from a Bailey Frame Change, where all wax in the brood chamber is replaced in one go, a 2 Brood box setup, or through partial comb replacement over 2-3 years.
Super wax and frames should be replaced when needed. It is often good to use either the early spring flow and post-harvest feeding to get the bees to draw new comb.
Sort Through Old Frames Post-Harvest
The easiest way to go about sorting through frames in autumn is to have three piles.
The Good pile
The Bad pile
The Maybe pile
Go through every box of frames and scrape the propolis of the lugs. Assess each frame and place in the appropriate pile. Frames that belong in the good pile are those that can be put straight into a hive next season, both foundation and drawn comb. Into the bad pile goes frames with dark wax, any frames that are mouldy or contain fermented honey, and frames from diseased hives. Depending on the status of the frames and wax, the maybe pile will usually contain frames with honey, pollen, drone cells, or wobbly and misshapen comb. You may find that these frames are not good enough to put straight into a brood box or super but not bad enough to warrant throwing out.
Cut out the wax
Next, cut out all the wax from the frames in the bad pile and put into plastic bags or boxes for melting down. Seal them properly and hang up the frames that are to be cleaned. Frames for repair are first cleaned and then repaired.
Once the ‘Bad Pile’ is dealt with, go through the empty supers and brood boxes and check if any will need repairing or repainting and leave those aside. Scrape off any comb on the inside of the box and check for wax moth cocoons in the corners and grooves, turn it upside down as well as sometimes they are hiding in the bee space at the bottom of the side walls. If you want to do a thorough clean, or if you suspect disease, you can use a blowtorch to clean the inside of the boxes as well if they are timber, or soak in bleach/sodium hypochlorite to kill pathogens. For more on cleaning and sterilising frames and equipment, read Cleaning Beehive Frames and Equipment
Once clean, the frames from the good pile are then placed back into the boxes and stacked on top of a solid bottom board, with a sheet or two of newspaper between each box and a crown board with the hole covered or a roof on top. Before stacking you may opt to take precautions against wax moth infestations. Read here for instructions on How to do Wax Moth Treatment of Comb.
Tackling the Dreaded Maybe – Pile
Good and bad frames sorted, you are now left with the most difficult job, and that is to sort through the maybe pile. Tackle these frames on a day when you are feeling especially ruthless and unforgiving. If not, chances are that frames and comb that really are not good enough to be reused will slip through the net. Never leave this job for spring or summer. Trust me, the longer you leave it, the more mercy you will show, so make sure to do it in the autumn or winter.
Again, go through the pile and divide into bad and ok. You can salvage frames with comb, and reuse, but always ask yourself if a sheet of foundation would not be a better use of the frame. That will often answer the question for you.
Frames with Honey
Brood frames containing honey can be given back to the bees or stored, and frames with pollen or bee-bread can be given back to the bees or frozen and used next season. The same can be done with super frames. The easiest way to feed it back to the bees is to scrape the wax cappings and place the super under the brood box to get the bees to move it up into the brood nest. Do this in spring before you have added supers to get the bees to use up the honey as opposed to storing it in the supers, or in the autumn after harvest. Remove the super before the bees have cleaned it out completely and the queen has gone down and started laying.
Please note that if feeding bees honey, care should be taken to only feed back honey that the colonies collected themselves. This is to prevent spread of disease. It is also why most disease experts will advise against open feeding of honey that many beekeepers practice. This is where stacks of boxes or extractor or processing equipment is left outside for bees to ‘clean up’.
Frames with Pollen and Bee Bread
Pollen or bee bread that is not frozen when stored over winter tends to ferment or go mouldy and can then not be used the following season. Frames with pollen or bee-bread that will not be reused can be melted down or cut down to starter strips as described below. If there are only small patches of pollen or bee-bread and the comb is otherwise good to reuse, the cells can be scraped down to the foundation. The bees will clean and repair the wax.
Frames with Holes in the Wax or Foundation
Frames with foundation with holes in them, or any other fresh, clean wax can be kept and used to bulk up swarm lures in the spring and summer. Always exercise caution and good judgement when using used frames for swarm lures and never use frames that have contained brood, or frames from diseased colonies, or colonies that died out, as you will risk spreading disease to swarms and other colonies.
Frames with Drone Cells
Super frames with drone size cells are not a problem as the queen will not get up to lay in them, so can be reused (presuming you use a queen excluder or place the super as a second or third super if not). However, brood frames with a lot of drone cells should be melted down, alternatively the patch containing the larger cells can be cut out and removed if the comb is otherwise good. If and when they need to rear drones, the bees will build new drone cells and the queen will lay them up.
Partially Good Comb
If you have frames where the top of the wax is good but the rest is not, you can make up frames for cut comb, ivy honey, heather honey, or drone brood by cutting out most of the wax and leaving a strip or segment of wax at the top. It is essentially the same as using a starter strip of foundation from which the bees will build the comb into the frame. The reason this can be done for ivy and heather honey is that honey from those two crops is usually pressed out as opposed to spun out and hence it is better to use unwired wax.
Mark those frames as appropriate with a ‘D’ for drone, ‘U’ for unwired, or ‘C’ for cut comb on top of the top bar so that you know which one is a drone or unwired frame when you inspect the hive. Hold such frames vertically during inspections as they are not wired and will contain wild or burr comb that could collapse if held horizontally, especially if heavy with honey.
What’s Next?
After this is done, you’re done! The only thing that remains is marking the frames and boxes accordingly, stacking them and waiting for spring. Oh, and I nearly forgot…. You should get going with cleaning the old frames, repairing damaged equipment, and then of course melting down and cleaning the old wax you cut out of the frames so you can use the Beeswax for candles etc… For all these things, You will find the following blogs useful:
Hanna Bäckmo is an award-winning beekeeper, entrepreneur, hobby gardener and internationally published writer. Originally from a small island in Sweden, she now lives in East Cork with her son, two dogs, a flock of rescue chickens and lots of bees. Hanna is the founder of Hanna’s Bees, producing a unique range of natural and sustainable honey, propolis, and beeswax products sold in Ireland’s leading Gift & Artisan food stores and select US outlets. With 70 colonies of Native Irish honeybees, she is a passionate bee-advocate and educator and is an Ambassador for the Native Irish Honeybee.
In the world of natural remedies, few elixirs possess the mystique and healing powers of Ivy honey. In this blog, I unravel the secrets of Ivy Honey, a treasure hidden in plain sight, and explore its remarkable potential as a remedy for coughs and respiratory ailments.
Late winter and early spring is the time of year when honeybees are most at risk of starvation. It is therefore of utmost importance that beekeepers are vigilant and check their colonies for stores and feed if necessary. Read on to learn how to give emergency feed to bees in winter and spring.
BEEKEEPING TIP: What to do With Old Brood Frames
At the end of the beekeeping season we are left with stacks of supers containing anything from extracted frames, wet or dry, to frames with partially drawn comb, foundation, pollen, drone cells, and crystallized honey from brassica or ivy. Not seldom will you also find frames where the bees have built comb parallel to the sheet of wax, or at a 90-degree angle, and foundation and drawn comb with holes in them. If you think this sounds like a handful, brace yourself. We have not even got to the old brood frames yet.
Sorting Old Brood Frames
The very best of the brood frames are usually left in the hives over winter, leaving us to deal with those that are:
Thrown into the mix are typically also a few frames with foundation rejected by the bees and a couple of frames hanging together by the grace of God, two wonky nails and a good deal of propolis. Hardly textbook picture and not one bit pleasant to deal with. But dealt with they shall be. And before the beekeeping season begins is the very best time to do it.
So, read this, roll up your sleeves and get on with it. Come spring, you will thank yourself for having done it. You will have well organised boxes of nice healthy comb and foundation to put onto your colonies. No dirty combs, no stink, no mess, and no wax moth!
N.B. Some, but not all, of what is contained in this article presupposes that your brood and super frames are of different sizes and thus not interchangeable. If you operate a system whereby you have the same frame sizes for brood and supers, chances are you already have developed methods for wax renewal and circulation as such a system makes it easier to move frames between brood and supers.
Best Practice: Replace Brood Wax Annually
The wax in the brood chamber should be renewed annually or as part of a two- or three-year rotation, where a portion of the wax is replaced each year. Fresh, clean wax in the brood chamber leads to healthier bees and less pathogen build-up in the wax.
Another reason to be diligent in renewing the wax in the brood chamber is that for each brood cycle parts of the cocoon and faeces are left behind in the cell and are not cleaned out by the house bees. This means that the cell is gradually becoming smaller, which in turn leads to the emerging bee being smaller.
Brood frames can be replaced using a number of different methods, from a Bailey Frame Change, where all wax in the brood chamber is replaced in one go, a 2 Brood box setup, or through partial comb replacement over 2-3 years.
Super wax and frames should be replaced when needed. It is often good to use either the early spring flow and post-harvest feeding to get the bees to draw new comb.
Sort Through Old Frames Post-Harvest
The easiest way to go about sorting through frames in autumn is to have three piles.
Go through every box of frames and scrape the propolis of the lugs. Assess each frame and place in the appropriate pile. Frames that belong in the good pile are those that can be put straight into a hive next season, both foundation and drawn comb. Into the bad pile goes frames with dark wax, any frames that are mouldy or contain fermented honey, and frames from diseased hives. Depending on the status of the frames and wax, the maybe pile will usually contain frames with honey, pollen, drone cells, or wobbly and misshapen comb. You may find that these frames are not good enough to put straight into a brood box or super but not bad enough to warrant throwing out.
Cut out the wax
Next, cut out all the wax from the frames in the bad pile and put into plastic bags or boxes for melting down. Seal them properly and hang up the frames that are to be cleaned. Frames for repair are first cleaned and then repaired.
Once the ‘Bad Pile’ is dealt with, go through the empty supers and brood boxes and check if any will need repairing or repainting and leave those aside. Scrape off any comb on the inside of the box and check for wax moth cocoons in the corners and grooves, turn it upside down as well as sometimes they are hiding in the bee space at the bottom of the side walls. If you want to do a thorough clean, or if you suspect disease, you can use a blowtorch to clean the inside of the boxes as well if they are timber, or soak in bleach/sodium hypochlorite to kill pathogens. For more on cleaning and sterilising frames and equipment, read Cleaning Beehive Frames and Equipment
Once clean, the frames from the good pile are then placed back into the boxes and stacked on top of a solid bottom board, with a sheet or two of newspaper between each box and a crown board with the hole covered or a roof on top. Before stacking you may opt to take precautions against wax moth infestations. Read here for instructions on How to do Wax Moth Treatment of Comb.
Tackling the Dreaded Maybe – Pile
Good and bad frames sorted, you are now left with the most difficult job, and that is to sort through the maybe pile. Tackle these frames on a day when you are feeling especially ruthless and unforgiving. If not, chances are that frames and comb that really are not good enough to be reused will slip through the net. Never leave this job for spring or summer. Trust me, the longer you leave it, the more mercy you will show, so make sure to do it in the autumn or winter.
Again, go through the pile and divide into bad and ok. You can salvage frames with comb, and reuse, but always ask yourself if a sheet of foundation would not be a better use of the frame. That will often answer the question for you.
Frames with Honey
Brood frames containing honey can be given back to the bees or stored, and frames with pollen or bee-bread can be given back to the bees or frozen and used next season. The same can be done with super frames. The easiest way to feed it back to the bees is to scrape the wax cappings and place the super under the brood box to get the bees to move it up into the brood nest. Do this in spring before you have added supers to get the bees to use up the honey as opposed to storing it in the supers, or in the autumn after harvest. Remove the super before the bees have cleaned it out completely and the queen has gone down and started laying.
Please note that if feeding bees honey, care should be taken to only feed back honey that the colonies collected themselves. This is to prevent spread of disease. It is also why most disease experts will advise against open feeding of honey that many beekeepers practice. This is where stacks of boxes or extractor or processing equipment is left outside for bees to ‘clean up’.
Frames with Pollen and Bee Bread
Pollen or bee bread that is not frozen when stored over winter tends to ferment or go mouldy and can then not be used the following season. Frames with pollen or bee-bread that will not be reused can be melted down or cut down to starter strips as described below. If there are only small patches of pollen or bee-bread and the comb is otherwise good to reuse, the cells can be scraped down to the foundation. The bees will clean and repair the wax.
Frames with Holes in the Wax or Foundation
Frames with foundation with holes in them, or any other fresh, clean wax can be kept and used to bulk up swarm lures in the spring and summer. Always exercise caution and good judgement when using used frames for swarm lures and never use frames that have contained brood, or frames from diseased colonies, or colonies that died out, as you will risk spreading disease to swarms and other colonies.
Frames with Drone Cells
Super frames with drone size cells are not a problem as the queen will not get up to lay in them, so can be reused (presuming you use a queen excluder or place the super as a second or third super if not). However, brood frames with a lot of drone cells should be melted down, alternatively the patch containing the larger cells can be cut out and removed if the comb is otherwise good. If and when they need to rear drones, the bees will build new drone cells and the queen will lay them up.
Partially Good Comb
If you have frames where the top of the wax is good but the rest is not, you can make up frames for cut comb, ivy honey, heather honey, or drone brood by cutting out most of the wax and leaving a strip or segment of wax at the top. It is essentially the same as using a starter strip of foundation from which the bees will build the comb into the frame. The reason this can be done for ivy and heather honey is that honey from those two crops is usually pressed out as opposed to spun out and hence it is better to use unwired wax.
Mark those frames as appropriate with a ‘D’ for drone, ‘U’ for unwired, or ‘C’ for cut comb on top of the top bar so that you know which one is a drone or unwired frame when you inspect the hive. Hold such frames vertically during inspections as they are not wired and will contain wild or burr comb that could collapse if held horizontally, especially if heavy with honey.
What’s Next?
After this is done, you’re done! The only thing that remains is marking the frames and boxes accordingly, stacking them and waiting for spring. Oh, and I nearly forgot…. You should get going with cleaning the old frames, repairing damaged equipment, and then of course melting down and cleaning the old wax you cut out of the frames so you can use the Beeswax for candles etc… For all these things, You will find the following blogs useful:
Cleaning Beehive Frames and Equipment
How to Render Beeswax
Wax Moth Treatment
Hanna Bäckmo
Soft Set Honey – What is it & How is it Made?
Hanna’s Bees Win at Irish Made Awards 2024
BEEKEEPING TIP: How to Make Syrup for Bees
How to Feed Bees in Autumn – Beginner’s Guide
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Ivy Honey Benefits – Naturally Healing & Soothing
In the world of natural remedies, few elixirs possess the mystique and healing powers of Ivy honey. In this blog, I unravel the secrets of Ivy Honey, a treasure hidden in plain sight, and explore its remarkable potential as a remedy for coughs and respiratory ailments.
Feeding Bees – Winter & Spring
Late winter and early spring is the time of year when honeybees are most at risk of starvation. It is therefore of utmost importance that beekeepers are vigilant and check their colonies for stores and feed if necessary. Read on to learn how to give emergency feed to bees in winter and spring.