After the July 4 flood, I was able to recover 20 frames of drawn comb. Some with honey and bee bread in them. The goal is to save them from the inevitable toll of hive moth and small hive beetle damage. I’ve frozen 10 frames and installed 10 frames in 4 hives.
Today I saw the results. All the combs I saw had been recovered and reused. The queen had more space to lay and more cells to store honey in. So a success. However, on plastic foundation where only a part had been drawn out before the flood, mud had stuck to to the frame and they had not cleaned that off yet. That may be an issue with other flood damaged frames. I see 2 solutions: 1. soak and scrub the plastic then recoat or 2. say screw it and just paint wax over the dirt. I think option 2 is more practical.
The two nucs are now ready to transport to the outyard. They will need 10 frame bodies. The other 2 hives are at a size that I think I can split them this week. So I will take the nucs to the outyard, transfer them, then bring back the nuc bodies and split the remaining hives. That puts me at 4 hives, 2 nucs. They should recover by September to split again.
In other news, I saw a hive in the outyard with signs of life. Did the queen survive? Or is it all survivor foragers? Or a swarm move in? Could not inspect it.
