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Frothy Nectar

Posted: September 26th, 2017, 7:24 pm
by Countryboy
I had a late swarm move into a 5 frame nuc box about a week ago. I got into the nuc today. There were bees on 3 frames.

One frame on one side was worker cells, and had open nectar. (The nectar would drip out of the frame when you tilted it, the nectar was so watery.)
The middle frame had a patch of open brood.
The frame on the other side was mainly drone cells, and it was full of nectar.

The nectar in the cells was frothy. All the nectar was frothy and full of little bubbles.

The past week we have been having temperatures in the high 80's to low 90's. We are having a good goldenrod and aster flow right now.

Do bees sometimes put air bubbles into nectar when they regurgitate it into cells? Is the nectar trying to ferment faster than the bees can dry it down?

Anyone ever see anything like this before?

Re: Frothy Nectar

Posted: September 26th, 2017, 7:40 pm
by Allen Dick
My guess would be fermentation.