Hi Gilliane
One of my TBHs was totally filled with honey and nothing else - but this
was in April I think, when Mark the bee inspector came. He was looking for
brood to inspect and we went through the entire hive and there was only
honey! So I took about five combs then, returning the empty bars for them
to have some space for other things. I haven't looked in recently. Maybe I
should!
Helen
On Mon, 23 Sep 2019 at 20:22, Gilliane Sills <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
One of my hTBHs is absolutely *full* of honey. I opened it last Friday
and as I prised off the last of the end bars furthest from the entrance, it
came away from the comb beneath and I could see that the comb was
completely full. I can't take any honey because of the cross combing
further in to the hive and the fact that removing a top bar breaks the
honey-filled cells beneath, and this makes a mess. Trying to get out the
comb underneath would make a really horrible mess and undoubtedly kill a
number of bees, so I'm not going to try this. However, I'm curious about
how the bees manage when they haven't got any more space available to
fill? There's a lot of activity with bees flying in and out and some
clustering above the entrance, and they're still bringing in pollen and the
temperature above the top bars at the entrance end suggests they still have
brood. It must happen in the wild too that sometimes they run out of
space. Does anyone know what happens? Do the bees fly less, or eat more
honey, or just get stressed...? Though there's no sign of them being
stressed - they were surprisingly good-tempered when I broke their comb
(only one bee got angry) and they don't object to me being close by.
Gilliane
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