Drawn Foundation For Demaree.

[Millet]

I have read a bit on the Demaree and it states that you need frames of drawn foundation to fill the gaps made when moving the frames of brood about.
For the likes of me with only one hive and no spare drawn foundation floating about would it be possible to use fresh wax foundation or would it be better just to do a artificial swarm, and then may be think about the demaree method next year when hopefully i may have some spare drawn brood frames.
I may well still do the artificial swarm just to increase but i do like the sound of the Demaree and i do know you can still do splits with the Demaree but the lack of drawn comb has me unsure what to do.
Thanks
Steve.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Forward planning is the thing here - early on in the season when you inspect, if there are empty brood combs at the outer extremes of the brood nest, take them out and replace with foundation frames which they will then build out - keep those drawn frames then for your demarree. Although it is ideal, you don't need a full box of drawn foundation in the bottom box when you Demarree - I have in the past done it successfully with only a handful. The important thing is for the queen to have plenty of room to lay. The correct way of doing a Demarree is to carry on taking frames of brood from the bottom box and swapping it for newly emerged frames from the top so if you do that regularly enough she should never run out of space (which is the whole idea in the first place )
You could also just use a brood box as the first super - wait for them to start drawing it out and keep that to one side for the Demarree

 

[Millet]

Forward planning is the thing here - early on in the season when you inspect, if there are empty brood combs at the outer extremes of the brood nest, take them out and replace with foundation frames which they will then build out - keep those drawn frames then for your demarree. Although it is ideal, you don't need a full box of drawn foundation in the bottom box when you Demarree - I have in the past done it successfully with only a handful. The important thing is for the queen to have plenty of room to lay. The correct way of doing a Demarree is to carry on taking frames of brood from the bottom box and swapping it for newly emerged frames from the top so if you do that regularly enough she should never run out of space (which is the whole idea in the first place )
You could also just use a brood box as the first super - wait for them to start drawing it out and keep that to one side for the Demarree

That seems a good idea and something to consider, but will it not put a strain on the bees if i remove the brood box with the drawn out frames and replace it with a super of undrawn frames especially if the nectar flow kicks off.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

if the flow 'kicks off' you won't have an issue.
as you are going to take the brood box off to harvest the frames you could also consider feeding them some 1:1 syrup when you first put it on to stimulate them to draw comb. One word of caution though, bees need a higher temperature for wax making so ensure that the colony is strong enough and also that the weather is condusive to wax production.

 

[Millet]

Thank you for that .

 

[Jed D]

Last year was my first go at the Demarree system..
For me it came about by adding a second brood box.
Then placing supers between them , followed by putting all the capped brood in the top box, leaving as much laying space downstairs as poss..
I end up adding drone comb / foundation in the bottom box

Do any of you do this ? And keep the drones in the bottom box ?

It seems much kinder...

 

[Fatbee]

No just leave a top entrance. Thread last night discussed exactly that.

 

[BeeJuice]

I got a good reply on this in another thread from 'into the lions den' :

'or it to be most effective you need DRAWN comb in the new brood box.

If you don't have that then use your second deep as your first super initially, and let the bees draw a lot of the frames out, then use THAT box to Demaree into, adding normal supers above an excluder at that time. They will rapidly move the honey up into the supers as the queen wants to lay.'

The tread was entitled BS Nuc