Best Time to Replace Broken Brood Frames?

[BBK]

One of my hives has had a broken brood frame in place since mid-Summer. The wax came away and the bees continued to use it and built all kinds of comb sticking it to the adjacent frame. I left it in situ as I didn't want to overly disturb the Summer activities especially egg laying as this is a new colony from a swarm from my original hive.

Anyway, my intention was to dive in shortly before it gets too cold and replace the 2 frames that are welded together. Or would it be better to wait until early Spring? Or does it not really matter. Minimal disruption is my aim.

Thanks.

 

[drstitson]

leave til spring and replace as part of normal spring clean process.?

 

[itma]

... my intention was to dive in shortly before it gets too cold and replace the 2 frames that are welded together. Or would it be better to wait until early Spring? Or does it not really matter. Minimal disruption is my aim.

Umm.
I think its normal to (if possible) gradually work problem frames towards the end of the BB, before removing them.
I suffer from the excessive fear that Q is bound to be hiding in any wild comb available to her. Hence would want to locate her before removing the wonky stuff. And its getting a bit cold for a full-scale Q-hunt.
Surely its anyway getting bit late in the season to be giving them two empty BB frames? Would they still clean two-frames-worth of comb and re-pack the stores if the wild comb was put above the crown board?

There was a comment on here from 'Into the lions den' about the excellent comb produced promptly after inserting undrawn frames (into the BB, not at the edge) in September ... (but you are probably just too late now)

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We remove some frames of stores from the broodnest ( may sound awful, but it works perfectly well) and replace with foundation in September, and give a single feed of approx 10 litres (14Kg) of invert syrup.
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Back to the foundation in the nest. Try it, even if maybe only three frames of it (not hard together, put them interspaced with brood combs ) give a feed, and see what happens. The most perfect combs of the year, thats what happens. No drones wanted, so no drone cells drawn, just perfect worker combs. A nice generation of clean brrod in them and they are set well for winter. Depending on the colony we can do up to 7 frames of foundation. Would not go back to the traditional way of leaving the nest undisturbed and feeding till they will take no more. Significantly poorer wintering that way.
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