Bees Repair Super Frames - Damaged Frames Repaired in One Week!

Hi, I'm Laurence Ederson, Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. In this video, I'm going to show you some damaged supercomb. I'm going to put it onto a colony, and I'm going to show you how they repair it. It's funny, doing these YouTube videos, having a presence on social media, you do get asked a lot of questions, and I always do my best to get back to the questions, but you do see some common themes. And one of the questions that I get asked very, very regularly Is, can I still use this comb? Is there anything wrong with this comb? And a lot of the time it's dark brood comb, and I just recommend to people, I say to them, either burn it or put it in a swarm trap or melt it down and re-wax it and use it again. But when it's a super frame, and that's what I'm going to concentrate on in this video, you can pretty much just put it back in in any state whatsoever. I have a lot of super frames where I scrape back the wax and the honey, To use for my heather that I used to put through a press, and you're pretty much scraping it back all the way to the rib so you get just foundation again, and the bees take that really, really well. I've also got ones where they're a little bit bashed around and they've got holes in them. No problem at all. The bees are so good at repairing super frames. So I just wanted to do you a really, really quick video of showing you the state of some of these frames, and then I'm going to put them on a colony. I'll fast forward a couple of weeks and I'll show you how well the bees repair broken supercomb. Right, so I've got 4 different frames to show you here. I've manipulated them a little bit just to give you a bit of a mix of the different examples of damaged super frames that you can get. I've numbered them up. I'll go through them one by one, show you the damage. We'll pop them onto a strong colony right in the middle. I'll fast forward a couple of weeks and I'll show you how well the bees have repaired them. Right, so number 1, this is a very nice, relatively new super frame. And this is the problem that you get with new super frames is that the wax is very, very delicate. So you pull it out, it looks really nice. The bees have drawn it out in their standard style, but it's thin because it's only had like maybe 1 or 2 cycles of wax on it. And then what happens, and I've kind of brushed this one a little bit, is that when you brush it like that, you get wax that falls off. That one, the bees will draw that out so, so quickly. No problem at all. So do not worry if you have frames that look like that, they can go straight back on. The bees will sort them out. That is frame number 1. Now frame number 2. Now you might look at that frame there and think it's no good, just melt it down and rewax it with some new foundation. And I just think that's a huge, huge waste of time. All the bees are going to do in this instance here is they're going to realize that there's a gap there and they're just going to backfill it up. And if I had to guess, they're probably going to backfill that one with drone comb. So you'll end up with a super that's got half worker comb, half drone comb. And in the supers, Does not make any difference whatsoever because you're not going to have your queen laying up there. This was a brood frame, it's very different, and if this was a brood frame, I'd probably say, yeah, you want to re-wax that one because otherwise half of it you're just going to have drone brood. But for a super, no problem at all. My prediction on this one is, as I say, they're going to fill that area there with drone comb, and then you're going to have worker comb that's drawn out over there. Again, I would never ever throw that away. I would never ever melt that one down. You can clean that one up, the bees will fix it. That is frame number 2. Right, the next one is a slightly manipulated frame, and this is what a lot of my supers look like. It's dark, dark comb, and there's no problem with dark comb in the supers, 'cause if you think about it, it's not been through any treatments of varroa, so you're not treating for varroa. It's not got Apivar residue in there, any miticides, not got any thymol up there. All you're doing with this wax is storing honey in it. You put it onto your hive, the bees store honey in it, You take the honey off and then you store that over winter. What I've done on this one, just to show you, 'cause you do sometimes get this bits of it falling out, the wax is so much more solid on this one. So whereas the other one, if you did that to it, all the combs would fall off, this one really nice and solid. But I just wanted to show you the difference 'cause it's a really good indication on this one to show you how the bees fill this hole up because you're gonna end up with really dark comb on one side and then really nice fresh new yellow comb on the other side. So it's a really good indicator on how the bees repair these frames. So that is frame number 3. So frame 4, very similar to frame 3, got a big hole on the side there. This one doesn't actually have any foundation on it whatsoever. It's slightly out of alignment that way, so all I'm going to do is just push it back in a little bit, trying to get it in. It's a lot softer than the one before, so if you break it, you'll get wax coming off, as you can see there. My prediction though, they've actually drawn this one out with no foundation, so it's all drone comb anyway. But my prediction is they're going to put that bit and put drone comb in the edge as well. So that's it, they're my 4 frames. I've marked them up at the top, 1, 2, 3, and 4. We're going to stick them on top of a really nice big strong colony. Hopefully next couple of weeks we're going to have some very, very small flows. You don't get mega flows in North Wales, but the weather does look quite nice. They're already drawing out a bit of wax in the top of the feeders, so there's ample opportunity to get these frames repaired. We'll cut back in a couple of weeks and I'll show you each one of those individual frames, and I'll show you how well the bees repair that wax. So this is the colony of bees that we're going to be putting our super on today to show you how they're going to repair the super frames, turn them into pretty much as good as new. Big strong colony, middle of April here. This is a 14 by 12 box, absolutely jam-packed full of bees. Loads of bees down there in the feeder as well. Nice big strong colony. And the reason I've chosen a nice big strong colony is to give them space to move up into that super, and then any flow that they're gonna bring in, they're gonna really focus their attention on fixing those super frames. Then you'll see we've got frame 1, 2, 3, and 4, and that's just gonna go straight on the top like that. And then that's it, we're good to go. So we'll fast forward a couple of weeks and I'll show you how well they've drawn out those super frames. Right, so one week later, we're gonna look at these frames again. 4 frames, In 4 different stages. The bees have been going crazy this week. It's not been very warm, but it's been incredibly dry. So they've been out flying every single day. Today it is warm, about 18 degrees here today. Bees are very, very busy. Believe it or not, they've repaired every single frame and they have filled every single frame with honey as well. So doesn't always work like that, especially in North Wales. What we're going to do though is we'll go through frame by frame. I'll show you a before and an after, and I'll just show you how good the bees are at repairing those frames. Right, so there's frame number 1, and I can't even remember the state of this frame. I'll flash up a picture just to jog my memory, but as far as I'm concerned, they have completely drawn that out. That just looks like a perfect normal frame. They've drawn it out, they filled it with nectar, they're probably getting busy capping that now. So perfect repair from the bees on frame number 1. Right, frame number 2, again, they've completely repaired that up. There is a bit of drone comb that they've put in there, so I suspect that there was some sort of hole I am struggling to remember what these look like, so the video will jog my memory, but they have repaired it. It doesn't matter if you're using your supers just to collect honey, whether it's worker combs or drone combs, they're going to fill it with honey either way. So they've backfilled that, they've repaired it, and the frame looks as good as new. So I'm going to shake the bees off frame number 3 because I want to show you the difference from the old black part of the combs to the new yellow part of the combs. Shows you really well how they've repaired this frame. So yeah, quite easy to see, you've got your dark cells over this side, and then a nice new yellow area where they fixed it all, repaired it, made it as good as new. And then finally, frame 4, completely repaired it. This one must have been a little bit battered because they've turned a lot of it into drone comb. No problem whatsoever though, the bees will fill all of this with nectar, with honey. The frames are good to go. So there you go, simple as that. The bees are very, very good at repairing those frames. Especially if they're up in the super. There is not many super frames that I would throw away. The only real reason that I throw away super frames is if they're structurally not sound. So if they're falling apart and they're beyond repair, or they're rotten, or the lugs are broken, anything to do with the wax, I give it back to the bees and let the bees sort it out. And as you can see there, within a week they have just fixed all of those frames for me, rebuilt all of the combs, and they're good to go into the beekeeping season. So there you go, that's it. As always, thanks for watching. Please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye.