What To Do With Extracted Frames

[Jen]

A question has come up about how to handle honey frames.

1. Do honey frames need to be put into the freezer if you can't find time to extract them for a while?

2. What do you do with honey frames that have already been extracted? Should they be frozen before being stored for next years use?

3. What does it mean to to put a 'wet' frame back into the hive?

[Perry]

Wet means that the frames were just extracted and still have honey on them. Some folks put them back on their hives over the inner cover for the girls to clean up by having them pull it below the inner cover. Some folks set a stack of them away from their hives and let their bees clean up the frames, but this can set up a robbing frenzy.
I have just got to the point that I now store my supers wet but bee tight so that the girls are happy to see them in the spring.

[Jen]

Yes, the robbing thing, especially this time of year. If I have just one drop or smudge of honey somewhere outside, it brings 500 bees, and many die in the process. Plus the frenzy tears up the wax.

I like both your ideas of putting them above the inner cover, the bees will get some of their honey back, and they won't fight over it.

"I have just got to the point that I now store my supers wet but bee tight so that the girls are happy to see them in the spring."

    Do you freeze or BT extracted frames before storing them?

[Perry]

No freezing except by nature during our winters. I am still waiting for  approval of use of BT.

[J-grow]

I am fuzzy at best on this topic and many more for that matter ....... Are these examples or assumptions correct?

I might in the spring and summer build up to 3 honey supers on a hive and if I did the bees would build comb and store honey in these supers that I would extract the honey from.  In the fall I would be preparing for winter so I would not want the 3 supers back on my hive and so I would store them until spring.  I want to save the comb that the bees made to have them reuse it in the spring so after extracting I could give them the frames back to clean up for me and then I could freeze the frames to kill wax moths and then properly store them for use in the spring ..... Is that correct?

I could also just put the in the freezer " wet " to kill the moths and store them properly UNcleaned and give them to the bees next spring to use ......... Is that also true?

Or I could skip the freezing and treat with BT to accomplish the same?

Thanks!

[Bakersdozen]

Freezing kills any existing moth eggs and larvae that are present.  In the case of honey supers being stored, in my part of the country, a moth could find it's way into my garage and lay eggs in the combs that are put away for winter storage.  It is best to treat with BT or store with moth crystals containing Paradichlorbenzene.

Jen, I put wet supers back on the hives because it is a little more feed for winter.  I think the drawn comb is a bonus in the spring.  If you can't extract within a day or two, why not just leave on the hive for the bees to patrol?  The colder the honey in the frames, the slower the honey will flow. 

[Lburou]

Jen,

I'm a small hobbyist, so I can do things that take a little extra labor but don't hurt anything.  I like to put wet supers back on the hive a couple days. 

Then, I put the super in a garbage bag and freeze it.  After that it can be stored, with or without BT a., and it will be ready when I need it next month or next year - as long as I don't tear a hole in the bag. I have stored supers with capped honey that way.  Keep in mind that by putting the super in the garbage bag first, it does not have condensation on the frames coming out of the freezer.  HTH, Works for me. 

[brooksbeefarm]

Jen, if your doing comb honey i put the super in a garbage bag and into the freezer as soon as i get home and leave it 2 or 3 days before i process it. If you leave a super of honey out for 3 to 4 days before you extract it, you are sure to find either wax moth larva or shb larva crawling around in them. Like B12 said leave them on until you can work them up. I stand my wet supers up on the picnic table behind the house, around 100 yards from a beeyard here at home and haven't had a robbing problem Yet , i'll most times have 10 to 12 wet supers out there and soon a big black cloud of bees show up for two days and i see very little or no fighting? I store them stacked in a enclosed building on a concrete floor, i do use BT on my frames. 
  After  day two i like to set at the picnic table with my hive tool and mash yellow jackets and red wasp with it that lite on the supers my wife says i have a screw loose she may be right, but i hate those things. Jack

[Jen]

Jack, curious, why don't you use BT?

[brooksbeefarm]

Jen, i do use BT. Jack

[Jen]

Jack, oops I misread. Jen

[riverbee]

"A question has come up about how to handle honey frames.
1. Do honey frames need to be put into the freezer if you can't find time to extract them for a while?
2. What do you do with honey frames that have already been extracted? Should they be frozen before being stored for next years use?
3. What does it mean to to put a 'wet' frame back into the hive?"

this is what i do jen........
1. i don't freeze frames, i extract honey once in late summer, all the supers come off and every frame is extracted and those with moisture content that is not acceptable go back as feed to the bees. (fed back in a super above the inner cover, or laid across the top of the inner cover).

2. my honey frames are spun out, go back in the box and are stored.  i do not feed these wet frames back to the bees, too much chance of setting off robbing........i give them back to the bees in the spring. and yes, had too many times of bees robbing the beejeebers out of one another when wet supers were placed back on the hives. i do not freeze them.

3. wet frame?  frames of honey you have extracted. frames, even though spun out will still contain some residue of honey in the cells.  many beeks will give these frames/supers back to the bees after extraction to have the bees clean up. as i said, i don't........only because i have experience too many robbing issues from doing so.  there are different methods, some place back on the hive, some stack nearby, and some stack from a distance........
i have done all of these methods, and don't care for the result........

[rober]

sometimes I stack wet supers at least 200' from the hives without any robbing issues & sometimes I just store them. either way I freeze them & cross stack them so can dry out & not mold. even if moth crystals or BT are used freezing will kill any SH Beetles, eggs, or larva. I stored unfrozen boxes that were moth safe only to find beetle larva in them. luckily I noticed them before my entire stash of supers were destroyed. I am finding that as my apiary grows freezing will become more of a hassle.
right now I keep one shelf in my upright freezer dedicated to hive frames. if I want to continue freezing frames i'll have to buy another freezer just for frames.

[Jen]

Rober, that is the issue I have run into. Finding the room in the freezer for frames, I have one shelf decicated as well in our upright freezer. Been freezing a lot of frames this summer because I took two hives down, let the bee fly to other hives, then ended up with a lot of wooden ware to take care of. I downsized to two hives because it is a problem with constant freezing of frames. We don't have the room for an additional freezer, even a small chest freezer.

I have a lot of surplus frames now, of which I dearly needed. Some have honey, some have half honey, some are clean pull comb. I don't mind having the surplus tho, especially because I will use some of that surplus for nucs.

[apisbees]

Freezing only needs to be a temporary thing. freeze super frames and all for 24 hr and pests are dead. Then place and store in thick plastic bags to keep the pests from finding and reinfecting the equipment. Frees the super as well as eggs could be laid in the cracks of the super as well.

[Jen]

Apis so plastic bags are better than the tote I store them in. I take the frames out of the freezer and immediately put them into the tote and snap on the lid...

[apisbees]

Either will work. Large industrial plastic bag and stack 6 to 8 supers in them pull them up and tie off the top. Are your totes store the frames in the super?
I still store supers the old way stack them wet on a solid board and a sheet of news paper between each super with a solid top. This being said we do not have SHB here yet and there are very few wax moths but mostly we have coddling moths. The grubs only get to 1/2" long and under an 1/8th " in diameter and they so very little damage and it there is 100 bees left in the hive they will clean them out. a sheet of news paper is enough to keep the larva from getting into the frames in the supers.