Another dumb stunt!

[Kris^]

After cutting all the burr and cross comb out of my four hives (because I'd used the foundationless frames incorrectly), I had some decent sized clumps of comb left over.  Some of it had brood, and lots of honey all over.  My bright idea: I set wet supers on top the hive above the inner cover for the bees to clean up, don't I?  Why not set the pieces of comb on top of the inner cover and set an empty super around it?  So that's what I did with 3 of the hives.

That was yesterday afternoon.  When I peeked in this evening, two of the hives had cleaned the comb out fairly well, and a few dozen bees remained working on it.  But they'd started attaching the comb to the top of the cover.  The third hive -- WHOAA!!!  The comb still had honey in it, but there seemed to be as much as 1/2 the hive milling about in that otherwise empty box.  I guess I just gotta give them more time to clean it all up.

So after all that I still got cleaning up to do.  Hopefully nothing more than a little smoke and scraping attached comb off the top of the inner cover.  It may have been better to just drop the comb near the entrance to the hives? 

But I swear, I don't think I've had this much trouble as a result of dumb mistakes since I began beekeeping 5 years ago.  Sometimes I think I'm taking a stroll down Stupid Lane!

[Michael Bush]

Never waste cut out comb with brood.  Tie it into empty frames.  Cut it so it will fit and put rubber bands on the frame to hold it in.

[Brian D. Bray]

Never waste cut out comb with brood.  Tie it into empty frames.  Cut it so it will fit and put rubber bands on the frame to hold it in.

However, if the brood has been left uncovered by nurse bees for more than a day or 2 then I'd 86 the brood comb, the pupae would have died from being chilled.  I had to cut out 2 supers worth of brood comb after some of my hives died of starvation due to the weather we're having here in the PNW.  Right now, cloudburst, wind with gusts 30+, snow forecast for the foothills (above 2500 ft).  In otherwords "the wind is driving the rain like wet bullets"  Case of the Calico Kitten,  Steve "the Steam" Shovel, P.I.   One of my short Private Investigator spoofs.

[Kris^]

It would've been nice to save all the brood.  But I wasn't prepared for such an undertaking at the time.  I only came prepared to set supers atop strong hives, and was taken by surprise when I saw the mess in the upper deeps.  Not sure I cut that comb straight enough to "re-mount" either, but I suppose given the time and proper tools, I could've figured it out.  Another learning experience.