Questions in the Langstroth

Best Bees came out and inspected the Langstroth hive. The beekeeper looked at one of the frames in the top deep and it was full of uncapped honey. She took out another frame and found the same thing. She decided to look into the middle deep.

In the middle deep there was a lot of honey, but very little brood. Of the brood that was there, some of the pupae were dead. The beekeeper stated that she thought it looked like it might be sac brood.

After going through all of the frames in the middle deep, she continued on into the bottom deep. There was plenty of honey, but not much brood in the bottom and middle deep boxes. The bees had moved the brood nest up to the top deep.

The beekeeper reduced the size of the hive from three deeps to two deeps. She removed the frames with the dead pupae and some frames with capped honey for me to harvest. She put the top deep on the bottom and the other onto the top. There were also some empty frames that she took out.

The frames with the dead pupae she took to be inspected by a researcher with Best Bees. We got to keep four frames with honey. The hive smelled really good while we were going through it. I was very excited that I was going to be able to extract honey from the frames that were taken out.

After the inspection, I spent some time researching sac brood. What I was finding did not match what I saw in the hive. I began asking other beekeepers. One beekeeper pointed me in the direction of chilled brood being the cause of the dead pupae. Chilled brood seemed to fit the situation better, we had some very cold nights in the two weeks prior to the inspection.

I called Best Bees to let them know what I had learned. I asked them to let me know what they find out from the researchers. Hopefully they get back to me soon, I am very curious to hear what they have to say.

I extracted the honey from the frames that I got to keep. I used a fork to scrape the frames into a large bowl lined with cheesecloth. Once all the honey and wax with in the cheesecloth, I crushed the wax to get the honey out. Then I let the honey strain out for a while. In the end, I got about six cups of honey. The honey has a wonderful floral smell and taste.