Super cleaning.

[martin.henwood]

Last autumn I put my honey supers back on the hives for the bees to clean. With the mild weather, they continued to forage. Consequently the supers were never cleaned/emptied.
Now we have a cold snap I went to the hives to treat with oxalic acid I removed all supers. Some of them have a bit of mould others are giving off the meady smell of fermented honey.
Can anyone advise me about cleaning and reusing these supers.

Cheers, Martin H

 

[Cussword]

Steam Clean, then a scorch?

 

[itma]

Beebase has some useful downloads regarding hive and frame cleaning/sanitising. Have a look, and then check any details on here.


The lesson to be learned is regarding what happened in the Autumn.
To get the bees to scavenge the frames clean, there are two options for that time of year ---

1/ --- Put the supers back on the top of the hive BUT above a coverboard with a SMALL hole in it. An empty super above the coverboard and below the 'wet' supers is advised by some. The idea is that, because the treasure is on the other side of the (small) hole, the bees will perceive it as being 'outside' their home and 'rob' it. (Because bees can't communicate 'its upstairs', this may set off attempted robbing of other nearby colonies, so put the wet supers on in the evening.) The restrictive hole is essential to get the super(s) robbed out - without it, the bees will simply start to refill the space at the top of their hive.
2/ --- Alternatively, put a wet super under the brood (above the floor). The bees then think the honey is in the wrong place and stash it away for winter, high in the brood box. Some of us leave such a 'nadir' in place over the winter, only removing it in late Feb/early March (depending on the weather - no great rush).

For success, both methods need to be done before the bees have shut up shop for the Winter

 

[idg]

Steam Clean, then a scorch?

Forgive my ignorance but will steam cleaning destroy all the drawn comb? Or are you talking about Super outers only?

 

[REDWOOD]

Did you leave your queen excluder on as well

 

[Cussword]

Sorry, when you said supers I thought you meant just the box itself. That's down to my ignorance, not yours.

 

[Davelin]

You will probably find that the bees will do a pretty good job of cleaning up before refilling if you put them back on the hives in spring.

 

[richardbees]

Martin
......as you only have one hive I suggest you totally remove all the comb/wax from the shallow frames (with particular attention to the grooves in the frame sides)
Then wash the wooden frame parts in a "Washing Soda" solution, rinse and dry.
Buy new foundation.
Richard

 

[martin.henwood]

Ok a bit more information.

I put the wet supers back on the hives above a large feeder.
The feeder had cappings in it (I like to give the bees the opportunity to take the residue honey off them).
Above the feeder I put a brood box with just a few odd-sized frames in it ( this was to try and generate a gap between the colony and the wet super frames).
I had a queen excluder immediately above the brood.
I have three poly hives and two poly nucs.

At the moment, my plan is to put the dirty, wet, meady supers back on the hives in the early spring, to let the bees clean the comb before re-filling it. But I'm concerned this will be bad for the bees.

Next year I'll take the advice above and put a crown board above the colony, as suggested above.

Thanks for the help so far.

Cheers.