Summer has flown, and it is September already! There are just a couple of jobs left to take care of in our hives this season. Here in Colorado, and in much of the lower 48, by October it will be too cold for the bees to repair the propolis seals if they are broken. Therefore, it is a good idea to get most of our housekeeping done early. Keeping bee inspections as simple as possible later in the year also means less chance of killing or maiming the queen.
One job that is easily overlooked is the removal of old comb from the colony, and that is because it requires planning ahead. The oldest comb, and by that I mean the darkest, most-used comb, is in the center of the brood chamber. It almost always has brood in it, and who wants to throw out brood? That is why this time of year is the perfect time to choose which combs will be thrown out next spring, and place them appropriately.
We are often rearranging the combs in preparation for winter anyway, so we’ll add this to our list of priorities. Our goal is to move dark brood comb to the edges of the brood chamber so that when we do first inspections in spring, this dark comb will be unoccupied and easier to throw away, though you will probably still have some internal wrestling to make yourself actually do it.
In horizontal hives like top-bar and long Langstroth hives, the bees like to start at the door with one honey frame and one pollen/bee bread frame, followed by the broodnest (see Figure 1). In winter, they move back toward the rest of the honey frames, and in mid-winter resume brood rearing near the middle of the box. By moving the darkest brood frames to the front of the brood chamber nearest the entrance, we make it possible to remove them before they become occupied later in spring. Also, move all of the honey, except the one frame at the door, to the back behind the broodnest, so that the bees can go in one direction to find honey during the cold weather. A divided honey area can lead to the starvation of the colony. This is also why the entrance should be at the end of the box, and not in the middle …
