bait hive with lots of wild comb

[DaveG23]

A friend of mine had been given a brood box with 5 frames of comb by someone he works for. He set it up at the bottom of his garden/meadow. He hadn't really checked it since he put it in in late spring. When he finally checked it this week he noticed bees.

So he went back to the women who asked him to put the bait hive out and she gave him additional brood frames and a super.

So I went with him to have a look. The hive is a national poly hive, it had x 5 frames at either end of the box, and of course the middle of the box was full of wild comb.

Getting the roof off was a struggle as thats what the wild comb was attached to. Of course by lifting the roof, some of the wild comb was lifted out of the hive and some remained in the brood box.

The x 5 frames had a mix of stores, eggs, sealed brood etc. The wild comb that was lifted out attached to the roof didn't seem to have much sealed brood or eggs and seemed to be mostly stores and drawn comb. The same for the wild comb in the middle of the brood box.

So we decided to clean out all of the wild comb, brush as many bees as possible in to the brood box, move the existing frames in to the middle of the brood box and fill up with new frames at the edges.

Out of interest

1)have any of you dealt with this situation before, if so how did you go about it?

2) How would you have handled the situation?

 

[enrico]

The easy way is the way you dealt with it. You could have taped the wild comb into frames. You could have found the queen and out her in a BB underneath. Then a QE then the old box. Let the drones out occasionally or with another exit.
E

 

[Poly Hive]

It's simple.

Put a new BB with combs or foundation on top and when the queen is up and laying put in an excluder and wait the three weeks for the brood below to hatch.

Job done.

PH

 

[DaveG23]

Thanks guys - After we finished I did start to wonder if we should have retained the wild comb where it was and put the super on (that was all we had), come back later with a QE.

Fingers crossed they survive and prosper.