Cleaning Out the Hive

Since our hive is empty it is time to work on cleaning it out.  I spent a few hours this past weekend cutting out the dark comb and scraping off propolis.  The dark comb like below needs to be changed out to keep the hive healthy.  

A few of the frames still look light enough to keep in the hive and will help give the new package a head start not having to building out comb in the entire hive.

Scraping the propolis off will help me get into the hive easier until the new bees propolis the hive again since the bees use propolis to glue the hive together.

Before scraping

 After scraping

I only got through 2 of the 3 boxes because it took over 2 hours and my hands were starting to hurt.  I will get to the third box hopefully next weekend.