What is behind door number one?

[Some Day]

Here are a few photos from Sunday.




There were two small holes that had pollen laden bees flying into them on this shed.

[Some Day]

This is what I found behind the siding.






I had cut out about 1/2 of the combs when my son who started taking photos said he didn't think he was getting any recorded.  So we don't have any of the total hive.

[Jen]

I think this is an old hive, with how dark it is. Very cool!

[Some Day]

Would you use this comb in your hive, by cutting it to size and rubber banding it to frames?

[Jen]

Hmm, well... frankly I am not the expert here on cut outs. I would wait for the other more experienced beeks to chime in on that question.

[Perry]

The comb looked decent enough to me. Was there any brood at all? You mentioned pollen going in so I assume there was?

[Some Day]

Yes, I have the equivalent of 3 deep frames of brood, some capped brood, some larva, eggs.  Not a real solid pattern.  That comb I cut and rubber banded into empty deep frames and placed in a deep brood box with drawn comb and a frame of honey from last year. Plus maybe 20 to 30 thousand bees.  So far they have stayed with the hive.  I made two trips with bees from the bee vac and placed them in the new hive body.  They wear "roaring constantly and milling around in the hive.

I came back at sunset and found this on the out side of the hive.






I lifted the lid with the small cluster on it and shook them into the hive.  The next morning the roaring had stopped and bees were working the dandelions and bringing in pollen.  Do you think the queen was in the small cluster outside of the lid?

I am feeding them 1:1 syrup right now and I think I will leave them alone for about 10 days before I inspect them.  I will do an OAV treatment after tehy have been in the hive for 5 days.

As you can tell I have no idea what I'm doing.

[vvand111]

Sound right to me. Congratulations on the catch.

[efmesch]

"old combs" in good shape are very valuable because they are stronger than new combs.  I would think that you would do very well banding these combs into frames --BUT, make sure you only use the worker sized cells.  If you use the larger cells in the brood nest you'll be inviting your queen to lay drone brood.  Unles you decide to use the drone-sized cells and keep them for honey storage exclusively.

[Green bee]

When I see cutouts like this it makes me wonder how tolerant to mites bees like this are. I am no expert, but I agree with Jen. Looks like they have been there awhile with no treatments. I wonder what colony's like this might have to offer as far as resistance to mites. The answer to a lot of problems with HoneyBees might very well lay in colonies like theses.
       As far as the comb goes the way I see it there is no chemicals imbedded in it unless the bees brought it in. I'd use it. I seen a study the usda did and I was surprised at the amount of stuff that ends up in the wax itself. I would be interested to see a mite count on these bees just to see how they compare to managed colonies. Nice photos, thanks for sharing them!

[Some Day]

After I have given them a few days to settle in, I will do an alcohol wash mite count and see what they have for mite numbers before I do an OAV.