I ripped out all the knuckle busting castellations years ago. My knuckles continue to thank me year after year.
as long as you don't buy the cheap flimsy ones that certain suppliers sell
The wide ones are for supers. The idea is you start foundation off with the narrow spacers and once the bees have built the comb out and started to fill it you change over to the wide spacers. This means removing some of the end frames. You get more honey for less cappings and once drawn out to the wide spacing are right for next year's crop. I have used them but they are frowned on on this site and just collect rude comments. If you are happy to use them that is fine. The problem with the wide spacing is that they don't sit easily in a tangential spinner and they are difficult to remove the cappings nicely and easily. Horses for courses.Could someone outline the optimum use for each width of the plastic frame spacers please. I inherited lots of both and used the 35mm on my bb last year. Just wondering if the wider ones are for supers to get deeper comb/honey or if I'm missing a trick.
K
Yes - the really nasty ones are like rejected razor blade material .. vicious ! It doesn't seem to matter what you pay, some of the best ones I have were from Simon the Beekeeper and were really cheap - good thick and galvanised. I picked some up at full price on the back of an order from a well known beekeeping supplies and they were diabolical - went in the bin.
Thanks for that comprehensive reply. I have just bought DN1 and SN1 frames in the sales so Hoffman are a future consideration, thanks.
They're actually not 35mm. The plastic ones are 37mm if you line them up the same way or 36.5mm if you alternate them. If you make your own 5 frame nucs that are exactly half a brood box width then the 37mm spacing fits nicer than Hoffman's 35mm.
best I ever had. Got some off Old Castle farm a while ago and they are almost as good - also reasonably priced
they are fixed to the sides of your boxes, the lugs of the frames slot into the spaces in the castellations, this ensures the frames are evenly spaced apart - it also stops them moving about when moving the boxes.
For 12 mm spacing with dn/sn one can use upholsterers brass dome head tacks , they are approx. 6mm head height.
So do you use these to fatten out the comb in a honey super or do you use them everywhere? Is it only where you don't have normal width side bars?
I think when you speak of 'normal' width side bars you mean hoffmans which gives you double beespace between frames? over here our 'SN' frames give zero beespace so you need some kind of spacer regardless of how fat you want the combs
Thankyou. It's doing my head in, but I found this which I'll read through to try to come to grips with it all.
As JBM has said it depends on which frames one uses.
