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  • General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #7784  by SimnFishr
 16 Jun 2020, 12:16
I’ve been trying foundationless frames for the first time this year. This has generally been going well apart from the bee’s liking for drawing drone cells. I thought this might happen less when making an artificial swarm (as the colony would be needing more workers) but this didn’t seem to make much difference. I guess the girls know what they need better than me but I hoped for a full complement of workers with the bramble flow just starting!
(Mind you, these are nice calm bees so I don’t mind flooding the local gene pool ;) )
 #7787  by Steve 1972
 16 Jun 2020, 13:28
I have found that every bit of wild comb the bees make has always been drone brood...i put a colony from a nucleus into a full brood box last week but i did not have enough brood frames with me so i stuck a drawn super in to fill the space..on yesterdays inspection the bottom of the super frame is fully drawn with drone brood.
 #7788  by NigelP
 16 Jun 2020, 14:23
I have found to my cost the disadvantages of allowing the bees to draw super frames as they wish. They do not like filling drone sized cells with honey and if they do you can bet they are the last cells filled.
Couple of pictures below, showing fully capped frames of honey and non capped drone sized cells. In the first picture there is nothing in the drone sized cells.
I see it so regularly that any frames with large areas of drones cells (happens even when they get a nice worker templates) will be melted down and start again.

Image

Image
 #7790  by Liam
 16 Jun 2020, 15:00
Maybe next year when I have strong hives I might try some honey comb. Anyone tried the cassette method?
 #7801  by nealh
 17 Jun 2020, 18:18
I have just started out in to trying part foundation less comb's In the BB, a 4/5cm starter strip of worker cell and then string three horizontals of taught fishing line to help strengthen the comb to hang on. So far so good the bees are following the worker size cell, given a free hand then yes Drone is drawn.
 #7804  by AdamD
 17 Jun 2020, 18:28
Liam wrote:
16 Jun 2020, 15:00
Maybe next year when I have strong hives I might try some honey comb. Anyone tried the cassette method?
Not me, I think it's difficult to get the bees to work them - you need a good flow. If you have a go, let us know how you get on!
 #7805  by Liam
 18 Jun 2020, 08:23
[/quote]
Not me, I think it's difficult to get the bees to work them - you need a good flow. If you have a go, let us know how you get on![/quote]

So I have heard, I have looked into it and it seems bees prefer to draw the round Cassettes, hive needs to be ultra level and strong. Not sure I can afford the wasted resources at the moment, I’m trying to build up my stock of drawn foundation. It’s something I will Definitely be trying and hopefully next year on one hive as a test run. Will post results!
 #7913  by Chrisbarlow
 23 Jun 2020, 22:22
I made several hundred foundationless frames last year and found them semi successful. I used bamboo skewer's in the frame to provide stability. It was ok when the bees had fully drawn them and they were great to handle and extract from.

The downside is that the amount of drone brood they draw. A massive amount, possibly 40% plus. NigelP suggested when I posted about this that best time to draw foundationless was August/September when all chance of queen mating was gone so bees only draw worker comb. I never monitored this theory but I can see the reasoning.

If the frame wasn't fully drawn it could be awkward to manipulate the frame and you certainly can't extract it.

I eventually got fed up with the poor quality of too many frames that I wanted for making up nucs and the amount of drones in colonies

I now only use them to create drone brood frames for mating and varroa control.
 #7919  by Patrick
 24 Jun 2020, 00:09
Some people love drone comb in supers. Good luck to them.

I have found the same as others - they fill it as last resort and even more annoyingly as Nigels picture shows they seemingly often fail to ever cap it, which is a dead loss for cut comb.

Are you doing sections or rounds for sale or just interest? I know a lot of the older books describe it a premium product but for what it’s worth, around here it is a very slow seller. People seem intrigued by it in the same way as they are by snakes in a pet shop - but likewise only a dedicated few consider actually buying them. Even normal cut comb (my personal favourite) when made available has to be pushed pretty hard. People apparently just don’t know what to make of it.