The Honey Factory

[BGcoop]

If you use pre-waxed foundation or actual wax foundation, you don't need to add more wax.

adding more wax was suggested to me by my uncle who used to keep bees but hasn't in several years now. seems like it worked for the second brood box.

 

[R2elk]

The bees are working the sweet clover.

 

[Apis mellifera]

My first frames(plastic) I did not wax as the package stated they were prewaxed. The bees built almost more like burr comb on the frames and it did not fill the entire frames. After I wised up I waxed new frames and they built much nicer comb on those, but they are still using the funky frames, how do I go about fixing those frames now? Do I just swap them out with new waxed frames and sacrifice the small amount of brood and honey/pollen stores that are in those frames?

If the frames are really wonky, they should be changed out or the frames next to them will also be affected. You will lose some brood, pollen, etc., so the sooner you do it the better. Inspect hives at least once a week when you are starting out. You can rewax the wonky comb frames after cutting out the bad sections. If you're not waxing the foundation yourself, always buy extra heavy waxed foundation from the larger reputable companies like Acorn, Premier, Pierco. It's well worth the extra change.

Also, the bees have expanded to using most of the two large boxes (8 frame deeps)- although the bottom box has a few of those wonky frames still, so I added the honey super with the plastic queen excluder and waxed frames in the honey super, however the bees have seemed reluctant to build comb in the honey super despite it being waxed. Is there a way to convince them to start building up there?

You can try and take off the QE and see if they start drawing out the super and if they do, put it back on before the queen starts laying in it. Beekeepers tend to blame the things they can see and not the things they can't. Correct age bees in a colony is a delicate balance. Different age bees have different roles. Young bees (1-10 days) are nurse bees and older bees (21-35) are foragers. Everything in between is a whole lot of other roles. If your colony has a lot of foragers but lacking in receiver bees (yes, there are specific bees that receive nectar and store it) it hurts production. Or if there are not enough bees 12-17 days old, wax production will suffer. Best example is a large swarm that has the correct age bees can draw out a deep box in a week or two even if you put QEs between all the boxes. If beekeeping turns out to be something you really enjoy and want to pursue, then start thinking about overwintering nucleus colonies. They are the bread and butter of my yard. I always have extra bees to boost production colonies, and I never have to buy bees. Here's a deep frame of honey. I ran out of supers and put a deep box and foundation on the hive with a QE, and they drew the box with no problem.