Of course I try to avoid honey setting in the comb but every now and then I'm caught. Usually it's a whole super so I cut the combs from the frames, fit new foundation and separate the wax from the honey using heat. This year the pattern is completely different. I know why - the available forage has been different and so, in response, has my management but I didn't get things quite right. Anyway, the problem is this: after extracting I find many of my frames have lots of odd patches of set honey - sometimes just single cells, more often patches of tens or hundreds of cells. At least 50% of my frames are seriously affected. I suppose I could just ignore it and put them on again next year but my experience is that the bees usually just put more honey on top rather than cleaning the cells up first so I would only be postponing the problem. On the other hand I'm loath to replace over half my foundation in one year. It's not just the cost. It'll take quite a lot of time. One possibility is to put the supers back on for a time now. There is very little nectar coming in so I suspect they'd be cleaned up quite well if I left them on long enough. Unfortunately there is still some forage so I suspect that if I left the supers on sufficiently long for the crystallised honey to be removed they'd start putting honey back elsewhere! A more serious objection is that I need to start winter feeding soon and I can't do that while the supers are on. At the moment my inclination is to replace the worst and ignore the rest. However, if anyone's got any bright ideas I'd be interested to hear them. -- Malcolm Roe Phone : +44 442 230000 ext 5104 Crosfield Electronics Ltd Fax : +44 442 232301 Hemel Hempstead, Herts. HP2 7RH, UK E-mail : [log in to unmask] ------------------------------------------------------------------------