OSr combs

[bontbee]

Hi, help please! I'm ignorant and puzzled.

I have no experience of OSr (sorry, capital r not working on this new keyboard...), except to taste it, but I have been told by a local farmer that he is planning to plant about 180 acres around one of my apiaries.

I understand that it needs to be extracted pronto once removed from the hives, or it will crystallise, but what is the best way to deal with the extracted combs?

Is crystallisation of subsequent flows a feature? I am trying to imagine how any subsequent flows aren't affected by OSr residues - whether combs are put straight back on the hive wet, or given back for the bees to clean before re-use...

Is the residue of OSr too small a proportion to have an effect????

I'd be very grateful for any advice.

Thanks

 

[Beeline]

Some people keep one set of "OSR frames" and one set of frames for other types of runny honey.

I simply soak my extracted OSR frames in a bath of luke warm water, shake the water out and repeat and then hand back wet (water that is) to the bees. No issues at all with crystallisation of subsequent stores.

Depends what scale operation you run and whether you want to bother with soaking frames.

 

[lorrick]

Hi Bontbee, I am in my second year of Bee Keeping starting next Bank Holiday. I was surrounded by Hundreds of acres of OSR last year. I extracted some of the honey from the supers and without thinking about it until reading Beeline's reply Put the frames straight back in, no problems, they cleaned them up and carried over to this year, May be I was lucky but there seemed to be no problem at all.
Regards
Richard

 

[bontbee]

Thank you for getting back. I wasn't sure if there would be a prob or not - obviously not! thanks

 

[mbc]

OSR granulates quickly because it has a high proportion of glucose, this is a constituent of all nectar so anything stored on top will dilute the glucose content and not be liable to especially quick granulation, unless of course, the bees stack it on top in such a hurry that they fail to dissolve any granulated crystals remaining first, in which case this can seed the granulation in the fresh honey, this seldom happens in practice unless beekeepers wait to put the supers with granulated residues back on the bees until they're flat out on a flow.

 

[bontbee]

Marvellous! Thanks for the reassurance