A gorgeous sunset at the Chartwell Apiary set the scene for a series of hive inspections that brought both disappointment and a major harvest win. As we continue the journey toward our 3 to 300 hive goal, today was a reminder of the volatility of beekeeping during a Johannesburg summer.

The Lowlight: Losing an Established Colony

We started with the hive that had the damaged floor—a donation that originally came with two honey supers.

• The Diagnosis: As I feared, the colony has absconded. Looking inside, the boxes were empty of bees but filled with Wax Moth larvae.
• The Loss: It’s a double blow because we lost a potentially productive colony and a significant amount of honey that was left behind and is now being ruined by the moths.
• The Cleanup: The infestation is so bad that the box needs serious maintenance. Sometimes, when a hive is this messy, you almost just want to burn it! But we’ll take it home and see if we can salvage the frames.

The Highlight: A Heavy Honey Harvest

Moving on to the “skyscraper” hive (the one originally with 9 skew frames), we found a much better picture.

• The Robbing: This strong colony has likely been busy robbing the resources from the nearby absconded hive.
• The Harvest: One of the supers was absolutely packed with honey. We’ve decided to take the full super home to extract the honey.
• Internal Progress: I successfully converted this from a 9-frame mess to a standard 10-frame brood box. I’ve checkerboarded in two new foundation sheets into the brood nest. The queen is already laying beautifully on the new wax, and the population is strong enough to handle the expansion even late in the season.

Redemption: The Borehole Rescue

Finally, we checked on the colony rescued from the pavement borehole.

• The Transfer Success: Despite my “messy” transfer a few nights ago, the bees have settled in perfectly.
• The Health Check: We found gorgeous brood patterns with the queen laying in almost every cell. They have established several frames of brood and solid pollen resources.
• Maintenance: To prevent Small Hive Beetles, which thrive in boxes kept too low to the ground, we’ve moved this hive onto the sturdy stand left behind by the absconded colony.

Lessons in Late-Season Management

We’ve decided to remove the queen excluders for now. We want to give the colonies the freedom to move and store resources as they see fit as we approach the winter months.

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Want to see the honey we pulled from the skyscraper?

I’ll be posting the extraction video soon. Make sure to Subscribe to the Bee Sanctuary and hit the like button! Every sub helps us recover from the losses and keep saving more bees.

Quick Question: When you find a wax moth infestation like the one we had today, do you try to salvage the wax or just start fresh with new frames? Let’s talk shop in the comments!