Any one come across this?

[victor meldrew]

Hi, remember I used a hot air gun to uncap super frames for the first time last harvest!
I replaced the supers for the bees to clean up which they duly did! However a fair proportion of cells had been re-capped. Ok no probs I thought and acetic acid treated and stored!
Coming to use them this year I thought the frames a little light to contain sealed honey, on closer inspection and with the assistance of a meat skewer, I found that the bees had sealed over fresh air so to speak .
I am of the opinion that as the hot air uncapping process leaves a fair amount of wax around, it gives the bees material for playing around with in this fashion?
Question to past users of this technique, .Do the bees remove the capping in order to use for honey storage ?
I tried to carefully waft heat across to melt the cappings but as the walls of an empty cell are as fragile as the capping , the comb collapsed so this technique is a no no!
VM


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Swarm]

I had the wax run and reseal as I was extracting, which meant pricking about with the uncapping fork. Not had the bees seal empty cells though.

 

[Tom Bick]

I have used the hot air gun for five years now Victor and on one occasion when I placed supers back on the hive for the bees to clean up I had a good number of the cells recapped with no honey in them??
I don’t recall any problem when placed back on the hives the following spring. I never uncapped them apart from the few I poked around with.

 

[victor meldrew]

I had the wax run and reseal as I was extracting, which meant pricking about with the uncapping fork. Not had the bees seal empty cells though.

These are very neatly sealed and on more than a few combs!
As the supers are from 3 hives I reckon on it not being a trait of a particular hive , could be my strain of bee which have been happily producing their own Queens for years!
VM


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[victor meldrew]

I have used the hot air gun for five years now Victor and on one occasion when I placed supers back on the hive for the bees to clean up I had a good number of the cells recapped with no honey in them??
I don’t recall any problem when placed back on the hives the following spring. I never uncapped them apart from the few I poked around with.

Having attempted as I said above , I think I'll follow suit and leave them to it
VM


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Tom Bick]

Please don’t blame me if your bees decide to be different