Black comb

[Becky Hampton]

I did a hive inspection today. (Thank goodness it's finally warming up!) I have 3 supers on my hive. I didn't pull out all my frames, but about 3 per super. Top super - full of capped honey and heavy. Middle one had lots of bees, capped honey, and some brood, larvae, an uncapped queen cell and some drone cells. It was lighter than the top super, but still had capped honey. The bottom one had bees - less than in the middle one, some brood and larva. The bottom one was the lightest. But the frame on the outermost side of the box on one side was completely black. It looked like there had been pollen in the combs - or maybe it had been larva- and it was completely black as well. It had about a 2 inch section of capped honey but nothing else in it. There were 2-3 bees walking around that capped honey on the black comb but no other bees on the frame. There was no capped brood - the cells were mostly empty. The second frame in is one they're still drawing out (did some checkerboarding in the fall) but it looked normal in color. What does that black comb mean? Did it freeze? Should I clean it out and replace the foundation?

[specialkayme]

Is it black, or just darker?

Comb gets darker as it gets older. Starts off white, turns yellow, then yellowish brown, then brown, and eventually black. Nothing really wrong with it. Might want to put it to the outside frames, and rotate it out if you're worried about it though.

[pholcomb]

It's surprising how quickly the comb darkens. I got my first packages April of 2012. I spotted some empty brood comb today that looked like it had been painted with flat black paint. Amazing.

Paul

[Jacobs]

That black comb has had brood in it. It's fine to use it for several years. If you are rotating out old comb, you still want to keep it for your swarm traps. Bees are very attracted to the smell of that dark comb. When storing it, you need to protect against wax moths. They are very attracted to it as well. Especially if it still has pollen stored in it.

[Becky Hampton]

It does look it's been painted with flat black paint. And the pollen that was in it was black as well. Good to know that there's nothing wrong with it except age. Thanks for the advice on saving it to use for swarms and for the info on storage.