A few weeks ago, a beekeeper friend of mine came by to check the hives. She found that because of a misunderstanding, a couple of frames were not present in some of the bee boxes.
(Frames are wooden structures inside the hive that the bees attach the comb to.) The boxes hold eleven frames each, but two of them only had ten.
What the bees will do, of course, is fill the empty space with comb, making it difficult to get the frames out to harvest the honey, or do maintenance.
The solution is to remove all the loose comb and attach it to empty frames with a few rubber bands. A few really mad bees later, done and done.
I asked her what would happen to the rubber bands, and she said that the bees would take care of it. They like a clean hive.
It's been about two weeks.
The first picture shows one of the ladies trying to pull a purple rubber band out of the opening. You can also see three other rubber bands in the gravel.
I felt sorry for how hard she was having to work to fix my screwup, so I reached in and grabbed it.
Bees are unbelievably cool.
Here come the rubber bands. She was literally flying around with this thing trying to pull it out.
