Difficult apiary site

[omnimirage]

I offered to look after the hives of a family friend who was an active apiarist in exchange for honey, many months after other commitments prevented him from maintaining his hives. The hives are truly in a terrible, mismanaged state, making it difficult to do basic maintenance.

The other day, I opened up a hive to find all the frames full of honey and rather locked in with propolis. The hive was four deep, and the supers were quite difficult to undo. They are also particularly heavy; I can't lift them alone. After lifting two supers, I could tell that the bees would get aggressive if I went any deeper. Despite not knowing exactly what to look for, I figured it was important to check up on the brood chamber, especially since I wanted to ensure that there weren’t any queen cells or signs of disease/unhealthiness. How important is it for me to check every super, including the brood chamber? What should I be checking for?

When I went to take off the third super, the hive moved and split slightly at the bottom with many aggressive bees coming out of the gap. The split was down at the brood chamber and on the board. It was difficult to close off, and I had to flee afterwards. There were many aggressive, leering bees in the area for some time, making it troublesome to check nearby bee hives.
I then checked a hive that was isolated from the others. This one was much more peaceful: fairly neglected, but not quite as much. I managed to take some photos of it:

http://imgur.com/a/HIsbZ

This hive is five deep, with one shallow depth super. The last couple of photos were of some comb that was crammed in where the hivetool was in the second picture. The supers were unable to be stacked on top of each other due to this massive piece of honeycomb hanging off it. It had a bit of honey in it, but it was quite disfigured and large, and I couldn't fit it in well anywhere. Although I wasn’t sure of what to do with it, it had signs of many drones growing in it so I decided to discard it. I later saw it had some larvae, but it was too late to take it back to the hive.

I extracted all the honey from one of the supers, and cleaned up all the wax and honey. I didn't check deeper in the hive and I didn't have time to check the rest of the hives. Besides, the bees from the aggressive hive were still attacking us a good 50 meters off. What should I do if they're too aggressive to be able to easily do such work?

Other times working the site, I've found the supers to be stuck together significantly. I've only gotten to one of their brood chambers once and when it happened, a large piece of mangled comb tore apart as I lifted the super, causing the bees to become incredibly aggressive. I needed to vacate the area but couldn't easily put the super back on as the comb was torn in multiple places. What should I do when it's difficult to open the supers and check what's going on? Should I just keep opening them to scrape off all the mangled stuff and what not, until they're in better order?

I'm not sure what my general objective should be for these hives now. I was under the impression that I should try to install a queen excluder, so that future honey I extract won't come in dark, disfigured comb like shown, but what I learned from posting last is that a queen excluder may be even more detrimental to me now. If I don't use queen excluders, what else can I do to prevent the comb from going dark and unappetizing?

[G3farms]

Looks like nobody has been in that hive all year. Just a good general clean up of the frames so they are again manageable and a good scraping of the hive bodies. I would take a couple of clean hive bodies and as I scraped the frames down you would have some where to put them. Also need to space the frames out evenly or at least put all of the frames in the box.

This will certainly be an unpleasant chore but does need to be done.

[Les]

Holy moly, what a mess.  Not being a long time beek, I suspect you have quite a project ahead of you of removing frames and cleaning them up. I too would bring some clean frames and a couple boxes so you have a place to put the frames you clean up as you work.  I do not envy you.

[Perry]

There will be no easy way to do this, just roll your sleeves down, and use lots of smoke. Empty gear to transfer the frames to as you go will make the job at least somewhat less overwhelming.

[Zulu]

Yep as already said, only way is hard work. 
Take a box at a time, use one free box , deep or super , clean up a frame at a time and transfer to the new box, clean off tops, bottoms , and upper sides of each frame. Even clean up the propolis on upper sides of the frames
 Don't worry too much about comb damage, bees will fix it . Work firmly and not too many jerky movements and the bees should tolerate you.

Then when the box is empty , clean it up...... Loose comb and scrapings are either discarded or crushed for honey , or as long as the flow is still on , dump it in the open for bees to clean it up.  Don't do that if the flow is already over.  Not sure how late your flow goes where you are, Aus is a big place 

Then just move to next box.  If the bees are too aggressive , take the box away to work on it.

Good luck and have fun.   Post more pics as you go.

[pistolpete]

Aside from what others have said, be aware of the effects of attack pheromone.   Once the first bee stings you or your suit, the pheromones start floating around and more bees sting.  It snowballs rather fast.   The counter measures are: make sure your suit is freshly laundered when you show up.  Use extra smoke.  When a bee stings your suit, immediately smoke that spot to mast the pheromones and remove the stinger.

I would say you need to rotate out much of that comb.  If these are now your hives, you should rotate the decent comb from the supers into the main hives bodies and discard all the dark brood comb.  If these are not really your hives and you're just managing them for a spell, then just do your best to keep things tidy.

[Lburou]

It's winter here...As big a job as that seems, wish I was there to help!   :-)

[tecumseh]

unmanaged hives are a mess the first time you attempt to remove the burr comb and propolis.  the one thing I would suggest (it is how I attach such hives) is rather that remove a box at a time (from top to bottom) tip the entire hive down on it's front or back side.  if very tall you may need someone assist you in tipping the hive down on it's back side.  once the hive is totally horizontal then you can split the boxes apart much easier and you can also do this from the bottom of the stack upward.  with each box set on it backside even removing the burr comb from the top bars and bottom bars is much easier.

[Lburou]

That is a great tip tec, thanks!  Will file it away for the future.   :-)

[apisbees]

Some of the problems is that frames have been left out and the bees have filled them with bur comb. a piano wire or guitar string wrapped around 2 blocks for handles and slide / saw the wire between the supers to cut the wax will free the comb and will avoid ripping the comb.
 How are you removing the bees from the supers? Fume board, plower, brush, bee escape, Stand on end and let the bees vacate themselves. If it was me I would use either a leaf blower or stand the supers on end on the hive cover and let the bees leave the supers on their own if there is a flow on. If they are robbing you can not do it this way.

[omnimirage]

Great information guys, thanks. Particularly interested in trying out the piano wire/guitar string trick; the ripping comb is probably the worst part of this situation.

I spent a long day doing this job two weeks ago. This is the log I wrote in my journal:

Didn't look at E1. Last time we opened it we took out frames. New frames needed. E2 is very full, honey and bee wise. Extracted one frame, added empty super on top. E3 completely full. Extracted 2 frames, put another super on top. E4 completely full. Put new super on top. E6 completely full. Fully extracted top super. E5* extremely full honey wise. Right side of hive had freshly made comb. 5 frames worth extracted. Left side complete clusterfuck. Tried to pull up 2 frames. Comb broke and mangled. cannot pull frames from left side. Must work from right to left. Fair amount of brood on the top. Noted number of drones. Possibly preparing to swarm. Added new double super on top.

*E5 is a weird double hive: there's two supers joined together, creating effectively about 20 frames for each layer.

I ran out of time to do everything. In five days time, I'm planning on returning to the site, and camping there for the weekend. I should hopefully get a lot of much needed work done. The bees were mostly placid.

I tried to take photos, but with how busy we were, and more importantly, how sticky everything was, we were only able to take a few.

http://imgur.com/a/L72Jt

All photos are of hive E6. This is the only hive we worked extensively on: all others we more or less did an emergency, swarm prevention work on them. I had put an empty super on top, but the frames were undrawn with a bee excluder underneath.

After working E6, something unusual caught my eye. As seen in the photos, the bees were hanging on the outside of the hive: maybe I was using too much smoke? I told my assistant to give the hive a light puff, about every two minutes. Many bees also died. I'm not sure why they did so. It's concerning because there was many, as shown in the photos.

[Perry]

When having to work a hive with that much burr comb there is bound to be some collateral damage, so I think considering that, you did fairly well.

[omnimirage]

Thanks

The hive that I worked on the most, the one as seen in the photos, has met an unfortunate outcome: they've somehow drowned. Photos: https://imgur.com/a/XVo6P

No idea how it happened. I didn't pay that much attention to the positioning of the lid when I opened it, as far as I could tell it was positioned on correctly. If it wasn't on properly, it wasn't off by any large margin, a gap at most. I'm really perplexed by this.

[apisbees]

I do not think that they drowned there  looks to be only a small cluster pushed to one end of the box, and a few bees trapped above the cloth over the frames. beetles have decimated the hive and the wet bee look is that the bees could no longer circulate the moist air out of the hive and keep the temperature cool enough.
As a point of reference If you ever cook a hive, Leave the bees locked in with not enough ventilation. The bees in the picture is what the dead bees look like.

[LazyBkpr]

Hive beetles.. really glad we do not have those here to any great extent yet.

  I have seen a couple posts where you were run off by the bees. Do you not have a good bee suit?  There are times, when leaving them alone is the best option, but there are also times, like getting those hives squared away NEEDS to be done sooner or later, and that is going to annoy the bees..  I have two ultra breeze bee suits. One jacket/hood, and one full suit/hood.
   I usually dont wear any jacket/suit.. if i get three stings I put the jacket on.. If they get really aggressive, and the option to leave them alone is not there, I put the suit on and let them buzz, bounce, and try to sting while I get the job done. In a situation where your going to have to tear things up a bit in order to straighten it all out, waiting is not going to make it easier or the bees less ticked off when you tear into that mess.
   If you do get a sting, scrape out the stinger, and smoke the spot with your smoker to help cover the alarm pheromone.  There have been times I was smoking my full suit from top to bottom when dealing with particularly nasty hives. I have even resorted to spraying my backside with Bee go or something similar so i could keep bending over!!!

[omnimirage]

Hive beetle! How scary! Never heard about them until now. I've read that a stressed hive releases pheremones that attracts the beetle: I did do a lot of work on that hive last time. A lot of bees died for an unknown reason when I worked the hive. Could have I done anything to prevent this outcome? I'm now very concerned about the other hives at the apiary site... I also extracted all the capped honey from this hive, it looked fine but I've read that hives contaminaed with such is not suitable for human consumption. Anyway to tell if my bucket of honey is good?

I have a decent quality full suit. I still get a fair few false stings, and they've sometimes got through the front part of my hood, but they mostly just bounce off me. Find it a bit stressful though honesty.

[LazyBkpr]

cant disagree with that, it is stressful and unpleasant. Blame the folks who didnt take care of those hives.
   I have a farmer nearby that asked me to see if I could straighten out his one and only hive..  I never imagined the problem I got myself into by saying sure, "no problem."
   The hive had been there in two deeps for three years, and he had never looked into it, he just knew it still had bees...    The upper wax foundation had collapsed from not being installed correctly on some hot summer day.... those bees were still after anyone that ventured within one hundred yards two weeks later.. I know because I went back to treat them with OAV to get rid of the mite infestation... This will be the second year I have pestered him to see if he had gone in to check on them/ treat them, and put supers on.   I will probably just go collect the hive and hand him his honey in the fall, which I think would suit him.

[omnimirage]

Wow, cool story. Collapsed wax foundation would have dreadful to work with like that.