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House Bee
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2009
- Messages
- 328
- Reaction score
- 2
- Location
- Cork Ireland
- Hive Type
- Langstroth
- Number of Hives
- poly hives
Love to try some sections this year any hints?????
Do you need the sections and the frames?
Yes, basswood sections, three to a national section holder, plus however many dividers.
Yes I am in Ireland , using langstroth poly boxes and there is no heather where I live so it would be mainly blackberry & clover.
1) get the combs drawn on a Spring/Summer flow, extract them (gently with a radial) and only give the bees back that drawn comb when they go to the heather. The point being that the heather flow is too short and precious to be having the bees using it for making wax! (And of course, that has to happen with sections ...)
2) Thin, unwired foundation, a cutter (quick while the Sale is on) and some 'crystal' containers are all you need to give it a try.
"PS IMHO Sections and cut comb just aren't the same thing!!"
Care to expand?
Hi bontbee,Honey in the Comb - by Eugene E. Killion, - Dadant & Sons, Hamilton, Illinois 1981
May I ask if you have found this book helpful? ta
Hi bontbee,
Yes, I did.
At the start of the main honey flow in the summer of 1992, when we were still only beginners, but such with the intention of producing honey for sale, we proceeded (not 100% exactly) according to the information taken from Killion's book:
One of our strongest colonies on double Langstroth brood had made swarming preparations. We put the queen into a nuc box together with the usual number of frames containing the right combination of brood and stores and a just sufficient amount of bees to cover the brood area on the frames.
The upper brood box was then taken to the side and immediately replaced by two section racks with 9 Ross Rounds frames each, containing 2 x 36 = 72 round sections. No queen excluder was used between brood box and section racks.All bees which had occupied the top box were shaken in front of the entrance and and after entering the hive were forced to move up into the sections just because of the lack of space in the remaining single brood box.
Queen cells were removed after 7 days leaving only one intact. We were able at the end of the honey flow to harvest 64 sections of which only about four or five (I do not remember the exact amount) were not perfect regarding weight and capping.
Unfortunately the necessity to increase the number of colonies under extreme difficult conditions (we still kept black bees at the time) did not leave any room for a repetition of this successful experiment. The price we had to charge for each of the sections due to the massive cost for the material was also too high for the pre-tiger years, so we subsequently concentrated on producing honey in the jar and breeding bees and queens for sale.
The book was very helpful. All steps are explained and illustrated in a simple way and can be easily followed by the commercial as well as by a hobby beekeeper.
Regards,
Reiner
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