Actually she was surprisingly calm, considering our destruction, but the alliterative title was irresistable.

A while ago we noticed that wee Angharad had rather swiftly built out the frames in her first story and we saw burr comb reaching up through the hole of the inner cover. We were in a bit of a panic as the only additional assembled frames we had were in the empty nuc we were reserving in case of another swarm. So we impulsively decided to raid the Frankenhive (now called “Frankie“) for five top-bars, intending to replace them with actual frames as soon as we made some more.

Of course, more time passed than we wished and when we finally had frames, time, and good weather we found her second story completely full of labyrinthine crazy comb. Our suspicion is that while some of the bees were building good comb down from the top-bars some others were misled into expanding the burr comb remnants (we had scraped it off) up from the frames. Where they met chaos came to dance.

We felt like vandals cutting away all the beautiful, white comb but it was needful and we consoled ourselves that it contained neither brood nor honey but just some ripening nectar. Brushing off the bees and cutting off the combs we collected the top bars to be returned to Frankie. Then we replaced wee Angharad’s second story with a new box and fresh frames. The old one we took aside to properly scrape clean before re-use.

All that work undone. And we are probably in a dearth, best blooms being done and not much rain for weeks. We added a third story housing a feeder of syrup to help. Let us hope wee Angharad does not bear grudges.

Meanwhile Frankie has been building nicely straight comb on her top-bars but likewise devoid of food or brood. Nor did we spot the queen but we did not look very hard. Frankie seems quite small and will need help building up. We drilled a hole in her follower board and put a jar feeder in her unoccupied half.

And we finally sugar-rolled Dorcas to find 2 mites per 300 bees, not high enough to require treatment. Actually, since our sample was a bit generous the mite level should be even lower.