help bees building under hive.

[beekim]

any advice? i am a newbee and split my hive in may both hives seem to be doing well all was fine last sunday. when i looked today i have what looks like a small swarm about 100 bees under my hive they have built comb under the hive in one corner it is about 3" long and 1.5"across .I checked both hives and though i never saw either queen both hives were full of bees so i dont think mine have swarmed.any idea what is going on?

 

[Tom Bick]

I would say you have a queen under the floor and perhaps the new queen from your split. Or just confused bees.
The queen can on returning from mating flights miss the entrance and fined herself under the mesh floor and think this is the hive.
You need to look carefully removing the comb and put the bees and one hopes queen back in the hive.
Following this it will be good to close the floor for a week to deter the bees that have orientated to this spot

 

[Tom Bick]

A photo of a similar situation I helped someone with.

 

[beekim]

Thanks tom looks like iam in for a fun sunday.

 

[Tom Bick]

Yes but good fun

 

[enrico]

They are just confused. They have flown under the hive but don't realise they are under it! It happens with OMF floors. They then start to build comb because they believe they are in the hive. A little like being separated by the QE but they can't get through it, the answer is to block the area between the landing board and the ground to stop them flying underneath and change the floor for a new one cleaning the wild comb off the old one. Can't blame them really, they don't realise that the floor is a floor!
E

 

[VEG]

I had this happen very recently with a virgin queen. There were 4 large combs with eggs under the hive. I shook them all back into the brood box on a new floor. Mine looked very much like the picture Tom bick posted.

 

[Flatters]

Why not flip the floor over? You will probably have to turn it round 180 degrees so the gap is where the opening is. The bees will all move up and in a day or so you flip it back.

 

[Margaret Elisabeth]

Why not flip the floor over? You will probably have to turn it round 180 degrees so the gap is where the opening is. The bees will all move up and in a day or so you flip it back.

Is that a case of thinking inside the box?

 

[barratt_sab]

I had this happen very recently with a virgin queen. There were 4 large combs with eggs under the hive. I shook them all back into the brood box on a new floor. Mine looked very much like the picture Tom bick posted.

We had exactly the same thing last week. Eggs (but not lavae), honey and pollen in four or five combs. We put the bees back in the bb above, on a new floor. There were no eggs in that bb and our queens are clipped so I wondered if it was a failed swarm with a q that crawled back up under the hive.

 

[Tom Bick]

We had exactly the same thing last week. Eggs (but not lavae), honey and pollen in four or five combs. We put the bees back in the bb above, on a new floor. There were no eggs in that bb and our queens are clipped so I wondered if it was a failed swarm with a q that crawled back up under the hive.

If it was a failed swarm and your clipped queen crawled up under the hive you would have seen queen cells in the bb.