September – the seventh month of the Roman calendar. The Anglo-Saxons called it the gerst-monath or barley month.
“Best I love September’s yellow Morns of Dew strung gossamer, Thoughtful days without a stir; rooky clamours, brazen leaves, stubble dotted o’er with sheaves – more than Spring’s bright uncontrol suit the autumn of my soul.” Alex Smith
What a year! I have taken off whatever honey there was- there wasn’t much to take. The bees got so few opportunities to work – when they did get a fine day or may be two, they used up what they had stored t in the next week of bad weather. I actually found one hive close to starvation with no honey stores at all and had to feed them immediately. I found three colonies with no queen and have united them with a neighbouring colony. I used two sheets of newspaper with pin pricks in them and the amalgamations have gone well.
I am now sorting through empty frames and deciding which ones to keep and which to destroy. It is a good question whether we should reuse old frames at all. Is it worth it? Old, dark comb can harbour disease. Also as the cells are constantly cleaned and disinfected with propolis by young bees, the brood cells narrow giving rise smaller bees. Research shows that replacing over 50% of the brood frames annually reduces winter losses. In Denmark they persuaded all the beekeepers to replace 100% of frames each year and reduced the foul brood outbreaks completely.
It is probably best to melt the old combs and sell the wax for fresh foundation. I have a solar wax extractor that works well, when and if, the sun appears in the apiary.
Tim Rowe the creator of the Rose Hive, is in no doubt about what we should do with old frames! He suggests that, ‘one of our most important jobs as beekeepers is to throw our old comb so the whole hive stays clean. We have to do this because when we moved bees into hives we interfered with the bees’ relationship with wax moths. Wax moths get very bad press which is a shame because they been an essential part of the honey bee story for millions of years; without them honey bees would have died out long ago because wax moths are one of the very few animals that can digest wax. In their real home – hollow trees – bees build new comb every year and then deliberately abandon old comb…along come the wax-moth caterpillars, like a team of demolishers and told the old, dirty, diseases comb away. The bees have a clean empty space to build in next year. ..In the hive, however there is simply is not the room for bees to do this. They are forced to use old combs riddles with bacteria and moulds – no wonder colonies get sick. The answer is simple – act like a wax-moth and remove old comb, giving the bees room to build new clean comb.