Dealing with mold
February 3, 2016
The following is offered by George and Harriet Robinson. It is their first hand advice on how to deal with mold on frames.
The honey frames from our dead hives were moldy.
Although the bees can clean them up to eat the honey if we give these frames to another hive, Carol Cotrill recommended killing the mold by wiping it with a solution of 9 parts water to 1 part bleach (I used 3 cups of warm water with 1/3 cup bleach).
We spaced the frames out into hives with 5 or 6 frames in a box so there would be plenty of air circulation and put them all outside in the air and sun on an above freezing sunny day (Feb 2).
We then moved the boxes back under cover. Hopefully we can split our remaining hives this spring and have lots of honey to put with them. We may use some as spring feed, too.
We won’t use the moldy frames as winter feed since cleaning off the mold isn’t something we want our winter bees to have to do.