frames for cut-outs?

[dudley]

I have had my wife on hand when doing cut outs, she does all the wiring up, bless her.
But I have seen some plans to make folding frames to make cut outs easy single handed. The frame is hinged at the bottom wired both sides, you lay the cut out natural comb on the wires of one inside and bring the other side up and clip the tops together.
Anyone used them? any good?

 

[richardbees]

They might be but can they also bring you a cup of tea?

 

[dudley]

They might be but can they also bring you a cup of tea?

No, but neither does my wife

 

[alanf]

When I framed some wild comb with brood I got the fixings from the Royal Mail. The rubber bands they use to bundle letters are about the right size to fit over national deep frames and are fairly easy to move aside or slide along as you go working solo.

 

[barratt_sab]

When I framed some wild comb with brood I got the fixings from the Royal Mail. The rubber bands they use to bundle letters are about the right size to fit over national deep frames and are fairly easy to move aside or slide along as you go working solo.

We use post-office bands too, but hinged frames sound like an interesting alternative.

The last lot we took chewed throught the bands in a couple of weeks and ejected them out of the front of the hive, but by then they had connected the comb to the frames - just in time for me to try to get them up onto new foundation in a Bailey change...

 

[susbees]

The last lot we took chewed throught the bands in a couple of weeks and ejected them out of the front of the hive, but by then they had connected the comb to the frames - just in time for me to try to get them up onto new foundation in a Bailey change...

Use the "BBQ Method"...much quicker and less messy. Stick cutout bees and queen in brood box with foundation and maybe a drawn comb if you have one. Add QE. On top place super or brood box if a large cut out. Skewer the frames of brood with thin twigs across in two or three places depending on size and arrange across the box leaving beespace. Brood hatches...discard.

 

[barratt_sab]

Use the "BBQ Method"...much quicker and less messy. Stick cutout bees and queen in brood box with foundation and maybe a drawn comb if you have one. Add QE. On top place super or brood box if a large cut out. Skewer the frames of brood with thin twigs across in two or three places depending on size and arrange across the box leaving beespace. Brood hatches...discard.

Neat - I wish I had known that (or thought about it...) before now!

 

[george]

Not done many but settled on this way .

Tack frame pins on either side if the top bar , about 3 or 4 . Wind thin garden wire round the pins and the bottom bar on the same side . When you have comb cut out , lay it on the wire then wire again over the unwired side . Takes a minute to do . Wire it in a W pattern .
Obviously have one side ready to go before you get on site !

G

 

[alanf]

We use post-office bands too, but hinged frames sound like an interesting alternative.

The last lot we took chewed through the bands in a couple of weeks and ejected them out of the front of the hive, but by then they had connected the comb to the frames - just in time for me to try to get them up onto new foundation in a Bailey change...

Main advantage I see of the rubber bands is that you can position as needed on the fly and add as many as you want. Or as many as postie supplies, but we're not short of them. They do chew the rubber, but they don't build comb around them and they come off cleanly. By the time they're done chewing they had a couple of nice new combs fixed into the frames. This was their own clean wild comb they built in an apiguard eke, not salvaged from a cavity. I just carried on using it as a normal frame this season.

If you had many large pieces or were planning on discarding the comb, then spacing on sticks as per susbees saves cleaning up and seems the way to go. This lot would only start extending anything you put in there anyway. If they have made decent comb, then you might as well reuse it.

 

[Lee Smeaton]

can I just check I am doing this right,
I cut out a feral colony a couple of days ago.
I managed wire up 3 frames of old comb, added 3 frames of foundation and then placed all the smaller bits of the feral comb in a sort of stack between the wired comb and the foundation (this is all in the brood box)
when i inspected this morning, the wired comb was completely covered in bees and being well looked after, the foundation is allready being drawn - and the stack in the middle was a bit of a seething ball of bees (a right mess to be honest).

I unpicked the stack as best as i could, put a super of foundation on the brood box - then put an empty super on that.

In this empty super (resting on the frames of the super below. I laid out all the old comb from the stack in neat rows to allow bee access to all areas. This layer includes brood.

Should I fit a queen excluder so that once the brood hatches the comb cant be laid in again - or will that trap drones as well? I was thinking of the excluder going between the two supers so I would have a brood and a half - is that a bit pointless as I have 4 frames of foundation in the brood box yet to be filled?