T
Tom Bick
Guest
This thread is not intended to be an attack on foundation, pro or anti any particular system of beekeeping but simply my observations of foundationless frames.
First if your sole intentions in beekeeping is all about honey production then perhaps this is not for you but if you are interested in the bees and wish to perhaps observe them closer on comb of their choosing and watch them build this wonderful structure then it may work for you and can be very rewarding. To me wax and comb building is as important as honey production and gives me great pleasure throughout the whole year and I believe the whole process has good health benefits for the bees.
It’s not rocket science and remarkably simple but a few differences do exist or at least I have observed over the last couple of years. I don’t have all the answers and probably large gaps of technical knowledge and can only comment on what I have observed.
The frames are the same as any frame of your choice although I now make my own simple SN1 and DN1 frames. I have found that my bees need a good 20mm+ starter strip of foundation to encourage them to build nice straight comb. If shorter, they tended to curve the combs outwards towards the ends of the frames and this comb needed to be pushed back straight and sometimes the frame turned 180 degrees or moved to be adjacent to a straight comb but the 20mm+ starter strip works great. Other people use a triangular section of timber fitted to the underside of the top rail and then the point rubbed with a bit of wax and this system seems to work well although I am yet to try it. To help with inspections the frame needs to be wired and for my standard national frames simply two horizontal wires threaded through holes drilled in the side rails pulled tight and fixed in place with a couple of frame nails. Some people use eyelets to stop the wire digging into the timber and slackening the wire but I have found that it’s not necessary on the brood frames providing you don’t intend extracting them. The simplest and best compromise is simply staple just to one side of the hole so the wire beds onto the staple.
Last year after convincing a friend to have a go he wired his frames with a strong fishing line and it was obvious that the bees prefer this over wire as they sometimes work around the wire but seem more inclined to incorporate the fishing line within the wax. The wires can be evenly spaced but in the case of brood frames, it is a good thing to have the bottom wire slightly closer to the bottom rail.
When the bees start to build the comb they will start at one, two or three points along the rail and in time virtually seamlessly merge them together. The bees when starting to build comb chain themselves together and its common place to remove an empty frame and have a mass of bees all hanging onto each other. Interestingly the chains seem to reflect the size of comb the bees are trying to start. If the bees have decided to start two small combs on a top bar then you will see two of these chains. I understand that the chains help to raise the heat and the younger more prolific wax producers move to the top and deposit the wax scales. The wax scales are moulded into lovely white almost translucent comb. With brood frames they will attach the comb to the top and approx three quarters down the sidebars the remainder and bottom bar are often left unattached apart from the odd bit of brace comb and this is why it’s often better to have the bottom wire slightly lower to support the bit of comb. If the bees are pushed for space, they can fill in this gap but it looks as they prefer not to. This gap does not seem to apply to supers as they are generally always filled in. They also leave a few gaps and holes in the combs and this along with the gap at the lower sides and bottom can only help with movement throughout the hive during winter.
One thing that you have to be careful of with the gaps are queen cells, with plenty of lovely hiding places, and we know how the bees love to hide queen cells, so extra care during swarming is required. Also the queen cells that are attached at the ends of the comb can seem way smaller than the ones you see on the face of comb, as they can be moulded into the comb edges.
I let the bees build comb when they need it and when conditions are right it seems faster than drawing foundation and this should be taken into account when moving the bees onto new frames. If the conditions change they sensibly stop, and even if they have built a piece of comb half the size of my hand at least 70% of it will be usable for honey, pollen or the queen so no effort is wasted. When conditions improve and the time is right the bees will resume comb building so it is possible to have a stop start situation in the hive with frames of various stages of development.
It’s often said that it takes 6-8lb’s of honey to produce 1lb of wax and no reason this not to be the case. You will have to sacrifice some honey production but compensated in other ways. I have actually found it difficult to detect a reduction in honey production and in my first year with loads of wax building it was my best average yield but accept there has to be some. So a quoted figure of 10-15lbs of honey so the bees can fill a standard national brood box of wax in your first season is a scary one but I reckon not as bad as first thought. First it’s clear the bees prefer to use nectar to build comb as the bees build fast during big nectar flows and soon stop when the nectar stops. If the colony is still expanding fast then perhaps fall back into their honey reserves.
Obviously they use lots of nectar that otherwise could eventually be more honey but there is a big effort and energy to convert nectar to honey and I don’t know what the figure is but would be interesting to know in the same method of calculating how much honey is needed to make 1lb of honey.
The biggest noticeable difference in the brood box without doubt is the amount of drone comb and on average 20% the result is 1000’s of drones in the hive and it will have to be something you will have to get used to. The drone comb is spread throughout the frames sometimes a frame will be 70% drone and others with no drone. This variation makes for no two frames the same, although you become familiar with each frame over the season. Not in every case but on the whole the drone comb is positioned towards the outer edges of the nest and obviously not by chance, as the bees will easily sacrifice this brood in order to save worker brood and its amongst the first left behind towards the end of the year when the brood nest starts to contract.
The relationship between the drones and the workers is interesting and one that most of us know especially in the autumn. In times of plenty the bees are happy to feed the drones but when the going gets tough then the bees will stop feeding and turn on the drones and it’s common for me to pull out the dummy board and wedged round the back scared frightened drones hiding from the bees. Also the outer frames can at times be covered in drones along with frames of sealed brood. We are all used to seeing drones being evicted from the hives during the autumn but this love hate relationship battles on throughout the season and one I look forward to each time I open the hives. When I open a hive and I see the drones and workers harmonious I think happy days all must be good for the bees but when I see drones hiding I think ok all is not right. With this high population of drones in the hive, I have noticed that when nectar flow’s end single broods can soon lose their honey ark. I put this mostly down to the pressure of the drones so it is important that the first full super stays on over the queen excluder for the season and empty supers placed over and under all the other supers to give the bees easy access to honey. Towards the end of the season, the bees start to reduce the numbers of drones and I see drone comb filling up with honey or just empty drone cells. The empty drone cells are a bit of a mystery to me and I think the bees perhaps stop cleaning them so the queen shows no interest in them or they remove the eggs.
It is easy to cut away drone comb from the frames to check for varroa and as part of varroa control but can be messy’ as you have to cut through comb and expose larvae so it is perhaps better to remove whole frames if they are mostly drone. It’s only been a few years and one day I may come unstuck but I have not noticed any obvious rise in varroa and I am happy for the drones to be targeted as this may keep the varroa away from the workers. I like to start my thymol treatments early and as the bees start to shut down drone brood operations as I know the varroa will start to target the workers so it’s the best time for me to target the varroa. Also starting thymol a few weeks early gives time to apply extra treatments if needed.
If this is of interest and fancy a go but a bit unsure then I would recommend first starting with a super either wired or unwired for cut comb. One thing regarding extracting I have only ever used a tangential extractor and extracted wired and unwired frames with no problems. So I don’t know how my horizontally wired frames will cope in a radial extractor but would expect them to be fine.
If you fancy having a go in the brood box then I would recommend as a start that you have a minimum of eight wired frames and only three foundation or combs and bees otherwise go with a full box of wired frames. If you are worried that the bees wont build straight comb then one drawn frame or one with foundation centrally placed in the brood box may help but dont be surprised if the bees at first ignore the foundation. Don’t do what I did on one of my first experiments and thought 50/50 wired and foundation was a good thing to do as that was a mess and all the bees did was concentrate more drone comb into the wired frames and way above 20%. All the other methods for moving bees onto new frames will work after all the only difference is no foundation.
What I do is I try to run my hives double brood and when converting I simply placed a brood box full of foundationless frames under the full brood box and as the bees expanded down into the new brood box they started to build comb. When I was happy with the amount of comb, I switched the two broods over and continued to run the hive until the next spring. In early spring removed the bottom brood box and replaced with another brood box full of foundationless frames and once more after I am happy they have made a good start on the frames I switch the boxes. I recon I can continue this system providing I need to or want to replace 50% of the comb every year and it should provide me with a good supply of spare comb’s after selecting the best from the discarded frames.
I am obviously a fan and as such somewhat biased but I defiantly noticed an improvement in my bees and to me was very noticeable. I work on the principle that my bees are happy and less stressed and as a result happy less stressed workers work that bit harder.
First if your sole intentions in beekeeping is all about honey production then perhaps this is not for you but if you are interested in the bees and wish to perhaps observe them closer on comb of their choosing and watch them build this wonderful structure then it may work for you and can be very rewarding. To me wax and comb building is as important as honey production and gives me great pleasure throughout the whole year and I believe the whole process has good health benefits for the bees.
It’s not rocket science and remarkably simple but a few differences do exist or at least I have observed over the last couple of years. I don’t have all the answers and probably large gaps of technical knowledge and can only comment on what I have observed.
The frames are the same as any frame of your choice although I now make my own simple SN1 and DN1 frames. I have found that my bees need a good 20mm+ starter strip of foundation to encourage them to build nice straight comb. If shorter, they tended to curve the combs outwards towards the ends of the frames and this comb needed to be pushed back straight and sometimes the frame turned 180 degrees or moved to be adjacent to a straight comb but the 20mm+ starter strip works great. Other people use a triangular section of timber fitted to the underside of the top rail and then the point rubbed with a bit of wax and this system seems to work well although I am yet to try it. To help with inspections the frame needs to be wired and for my standard national frames simply two horizontal wires threaded through holes drilled in the side rails pulled tight and fixed in place with a couple of frame nails. Some people use eyelets to stop the wire digging into the timber and slackening the wire but I have found that it’s not necessary on the brood frames providing you don’t intend extracting them. The simplest and best compromise is simply staple just to one side of the hole so the wire beds onto the staple.
Last year after convincing a friend to have a go he wired his frames with a strong fishing line and it was obvious that the bees prefer this over wire as they sometimes work around the wire but seem more inclined to incorporate the fishing line within the wax. The wires can be evenly spaced but in the case of brood frames, it is a good thing to have the bottom wire slightly closer to the bottom rail.
When the bees start to build the comb they will start at one, two or three points along the rail and in time virtually seamlessly merge them together. The bees when starting to build comb chain themselves together and its common place to remove an empty frame and have a mass of bees all hanging onto each other. Interestingly the chains seem to reflect the size of comb the bees are trying to start. If the bees have decided to start two small combs on a top bar then you will see two of these chains. I understand that the chains help to raise the heat and the younger more prolific wax producers move to the top and deposit the wax scales. The wax scales are moulded into lovely white almost translucent comb. With brood frames they will attach the comb to the top and approx three quarters down the sidebars the remainder and bottom bar are often left unattached apart from the odd bit of brace comb and this is why it’s often better to have the bottom wire slightly lower to support the bit of comb. If the bees are pushed for space, they can fill in this gap but it looks as they prefer not to. This gap does not seem to apply to supers as they are generally always filled in. They also leave a few gaps and holes in the combs and this along with the gap at the lower sides and bottom can only help with movement throughout the hive during winter.
One thing that you have to be careful of with the gaps are queen cells, with plenty of lovely hiding places, and we know how the bees love to hide queen cells, so extra care during swarming is required. Also the queen cells that are attached at the ends of the comb can seem way smaller than the ones you see on the face of comb, as they can be moulded into the comb edges.
I let the bees build comb when they need it and when conditions are right it seems faster than drawing foundation and this should be taken into account when moving the bees onto new frames. If the conditions change they sensibly stop, and even if they have built a piece of comb half the size of my hand at least 70% of it will be usable for honey, pollen or the queen so no effort is wasted. When conditions improve and the time is right the bees will resume comb building so it is possible to have a stop start situation in the hive with frames of various stages of development.
It’s often said that it takes 6-8lb’s of honey to produce 1lb of wax and no reason this not to be the case. You will have to sacrifice some honey production but compensated in other ways. I have actually found it difficult to detect a reduction in honey production and in my first year with loads of wax building it was my best average yield but accept there has to be some. So a quoted figure of 10-15lbs of honey so the bees can fill a standard national brood box of wax in your first season is a scary one but I reckon not as bad as first thought. First it’s clear the bees prefer to use nectar to build comb as the bees build fast during big nectar flows and soon stop when the nectar stops. If the colony is still expanding fast then perhaps fall back into their honey reserves.
Obviously they use lots of nectar that otherwise could eventually be more honey but there is a big effort and energy to convert nectar to honey and I don’t know what the figure is but would be interesting to know in the same method of calculating how much honey is needed to make 1lb of honey.
The biggest noticeable difference in the brood box without doubt is the amount of drone comb and on average 20% the result is 1000’s of drones in the hive and it will have to be something you will have to get used to. The drone comb is spread throughout the frames sometimes a frame will be 70% drone and others with no drone. This variation makes for no two frames the same, although you become familiar with each frame over the season. Not in every case but on the whole the drone comb is positioned towards the outer edges of the nest and obviously not by chance, as the bees will easily sacrifice this brood in order to save worker brood and its amongst the first left behind towards the end of the year when the brood nest starts to contract.
The relationship between the drones and the workers is interesting and one that most of us know especially in the autumn. In times of plenty the bees are happy to feed the drones but when the going gets tough then the bees will stop feeding and turn on the drones and it’s common for me to pull out the dummy board and wedged round the back scared frightened drones hiding from the bees. Also the outer frames can at times be covered in drones along with frames of sealed brood. We are all used to seeing drones being evicted from the hives during the autumn but this love hate relationship battles on throughout the season and one I look forward to each time I open the hives. When I open a hive and I see the drones and workers harmonious I think happy days all must be good for the bees but when I see drones hiding I think ok all is not right. With this high population of drones in the hive, I have noticed that when nectar flow’s end single broods can soon lose their honey ark. I put this mostly down to the pressure of the drones so it is important that the first full super stays on over the queen excluder for the season and empty supers placed over and under all the other supers to give the bees easy access to honey. Towards the end of the season, the bees start to reduce the numbers of drones and I see drone comb filling up with honey or just empty drone cells. The empty drone cells are a bit of a mystery to me and I think the bees perhaps stop cleaning them so the queen shows no interest in them or they remove the eggs.
It is easy to cut away drone comb from the frames to check for varroa and as part of varroa control but can be messy’ as you have to cut through comb and expose larvae so it is perhaps better to remove whole frames if they are mostly drone. It’s only been a few years and one day I may come unstuck but I have not noticed any obvious rise in varroa and I am happy for the drones to be targeted as this may keep the varroa away from the workers. I like to start my thymol treatments early and as the bees start to shut down drone brood operations as I know the varroa will start to target the workers so it’s the best time for me to target the varroa. Also starting thymol a few weeks early gives time to apply extra treatments if needed.
If this is of interest and fancy a go but a bit unsure then I would recommend first starting with a super either wired or unwired for cut comb. One thing regarding extracting I have only ever used a tangential extractor and extracted wired and unwired frames with no problems. So I don’t know how my horizontally wired frames will cope in a radial extractor but would expect them to be fine.
If you fancy having a go in the brood box then I would recommend as a start that you have a minimum of eight wired frames and only three foundation or combs and bees otherwise go with a full box of wired frames. If you are worried that the bees wont build straight comb then one drawn frame or one with foundation centrally placed in the brood box may help but dont be surprised if the bees at first ignore the foundation. Don’t do what I did on one of my first experiments and thought 50/50 wired and foundation was a good thing to do as that was a mess and all the bees did was concentrate more drone comb into the wired frames and way above 20%. All the other methods for moving bees onto new frames will work after all the only difference is no foundation.
What I do is I try to run my hives double brood and when converting I simply placed a brood box full of foundationless frames under the full brood box and as the bees expanded down into the new brood box they started to build comb. When I was happy with the amount of comb, I switched the two broods over and continued to run the hive until the next spring. In early spring removed the bottom brood box and replaced with another brood box full of foundationless frames and once more after I am happy they have made a good start on the frames I switch the boxes. I recon I can continue this system providing I need to or want to replace 50% of the comb every year and it should provide me with a good supply of spare comb’s after selecting the best from the discarded frames.
I am obviously a fan and as such somewhat biased but I defiantly noticed an improvement in my bees and to me was very noticeable. I work on the principle that my bees are happy and less stressed and as a result happy less stressed workers work that bit harder.
Last edited:
