Seventeen days since package install, they have taken only 4 cups (8 oz. ea.) in fourteen days. Three frames are as pictured, two other frames are drawing out and three are empty (8 frame deeps).
(http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae89/seaheli/DSC00965.jpg)
very nice. as they progress you may rotate those undrawn frames toward the center. just don't tip them before they are attached well on the sides!! :-D
Thanks for posting, I added a 8 frame medium super foundationless this morning, I'm eager to see how they do.
Nice...
How big was the package?
Aint it cool to see what bees do naturally?
If you belong to a bee club, how many people told you that it wouldnt work? I was told by countless beeks that it couldnt be done and that all it would do is cause a huge mess. When I showed them a completed frame, someone said that I must have gotten lucky. LoL
Yeah right..out of all the packages that were picked up that day, I was the only one lucky enough that received the 3 that could build straight comb.
looks good ,i love my foundationless frames.i like when they make 3 or 4 teardrops combs on a frame and when they finish drawing, everything is perfect . schawee
Quote from: VolunteerK9 on June 01, 2011, 03:57:57 PM
Aint it cool to see what bees do naturally?
If you belong to a bee club, how many people told you that it wouldnt work? I was told by countless beeks that it couldnt be done and that all it would do is cause a huge mess. When I showed them a completed frame, someone said that I must have gotten lucky. LoL
Yeah right..out of all the packages that were picked up that day, I was the only one lucky enough that received the 3 that could build straight comb.
It is cool to see it naturally! :-D
Everyone that I had asked, locally here, discouraged me about foundationless. I'm happy about my decision to try foundationless for my first hive!
Can't wait to see another photo of that frame from your next inspection!
Quote from: VolunteerK9 on June 01, 2011, 03:57:57 PM
If you belong to a bee club, how many people told you that it wouldnt work? I was told by countless beeks that it couldnt be done and that all it would do is cause a huge mess. When I showed them a completed frame, someone said that I must have gotten lucky. LoL
Yeah same story here too: messy comb, drone comb, unextractable frames, illegal, etc. :roll:
All FUD of course. 8-)
Quote from: rail on June 02, 2011, 02:22:09 AM
Everyone that I had asked, locally here, discouraged me about foundationless.
Ditto, It feels so good to show them wrong though! :-D :-D :-D
The funny thing is everyone has failures for different reasons and often blame something. If you were trying plastic and they messed it up you might blame the plastic, when maybe the problem was you didn't push them together and left too much space. If you were using wax and it melted and collapsed and they build a mess in their, you'd figure the problem is wax and buy plastic next time. When actually it's because you put the foundation in too soon, or didn't get it in right. If you get messed up foundationless, you'd probably blame foundationless, when actually it is probably spacing or leaving a queen cage in or something else the led to the issues and would have even in a hive with foundation.
So the people who don't believe in foundationless probably had a bad experience with foundation and blamed it on something that probably wasn't the cause and assume the problem would be worse with foundationless.
I've actually heard beekeepers say that bees won't draw comb without foundation. Or that they will build nothing but drone comb without foundation. Things that obviously can't be true if bees have survived in the wild for these tens of thousands of (or possibly many more) years.
25 days since package install; 20 days since queen cage removal; 11 days without 1:1 feed; "capped stores" present when feeder removed.
No capped stores present this evening, nectar is present in cells. Five drawn frames as in picture posted above. One frame has center brood area uncapped. Could not see larvae, late evening, poor lighting outside. Inspected two hours after a rain shower. The bees were docile during inspection. One bee was white fuzzy looking.
The bees have been very active the past two weeks bringing in pollen, noticed as late as 8:45 pm.
Put feeders back onto the hive this evening.
How is the progress of the hive? Any thing that I should change?
Sounds like you are doing fine. I don't think you need to be feeding now. We are still in main flow in central NC and that will last until about the middle of July unless we get into a drought. You don't want the bees to start backfilling the brood nest with sugar syrup, so I would wait until mid July to put the feeders back on. From then until September you can let them store sugar syrup for winter. Then we get a light fall flow in September and October so you might be able to take the feeders off again if they have sufficient stores for winter.
I love foundationless.
One 17 inch, 1/8 X 3/4. stappled instead of the foundation. I melt wax on that after it is in the frame.
wires in the frames.
Good to go!
Reclaiming the frames is a breeze and so fast, cut the wax at the stick, break at the wires, hit the remaining wax with a blow torch and the frames are good to be used again.
...plus they seem to build faster and work more frames right away without the foundation in their way.
I went foundationless more years ago than a lot of you have been out of diapers. The way I see it is the bee's seem happer you have larger more healthier bees that produce more honey than with foundation. One other thing, why spend your hard earned money on foundation when the bees know more about what they want and need than any man alive.
The only thing about foundationless super frames is that once in a blue moon you get a hive that will build crazy comb, they will build from the bottom up or just build one big mess that resembles a hornets nest, most of the time when they do this they will start building on the queen excluder and work their way up. This is the time to use foundation, and not the entire super just everyother frame. If you watch they will draw out the open frames before they do the frames with foundation. The cells will also be larger and that means less wax and more honey.
And every small cell user out there will tell you natural comb is smaller cell than foundation and will give you smaller bees. I guess I'll just stick to foundation. At least most agree to it's points, whether good or bad.
I don't like to take the risk of going foundationless myself. Got too much on my plate right now to worry about how the bees will draw it out without foundation.
Looks good. When you put the second box on, let us know how your girls are doing.
26 days since package install, frames 1 thru 5.
(http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae89/seaheli/DSC00994.jpg)
(http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae89/seaheli/DSC00991.jpg)
(http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae89/seaheli/DSC00989.jpg)
(http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae89/seaheli/DSC00987.jpg)
(http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae89/seaheli/DSC00986.jpg)
nice so far, but i have seen disasters in a new box without guide combs of some sort.
i have gone foundationless but it has been slow, i open the hive enough to get new comb in between established combs.
on nucs i give them 3 empty frames and 2 with the queen cell and capped brood with some honey.
add alot of nurse bees and watch how quick they draw straight pretty comb for her to lay in.
without using guide comb i would still be using foundation out of frustration with wonky combs! :whip:
bailey
Looks real good, take an old man's advice.....you would be better off to cross wire your brood frames is helps relieve some of the stress on the wax where it is attached to the top bar. If the wire is pulled taught the bees will build with the wire in the center of the comb, when it gets really hot like here in the southeast and you have a lot of bees the wax will sometimes fall off of the frame and make you one big mess in the bottome of the hive.
"Just the words of and "old fart" that has played this game for a couple of days."
:brian:
The frames in the photos look like they have the comb guides which are topbars with the bottom cut at a 15 to 20 degree bevel which when waxed the bees produces a nice straight comb.
I have used 2-3 foundationless frames in each of my 4 hives this year. Every frame drawn out is completely drone comb. Is this typical?
Quote from: MTWIBadger on June 12, 2011, 02:39:01 AM
I have used 2-3 foundationless frames in each of my 4 hives this year. Every frame drawn out is completely drone comb. Is this typical?
Yes, it's typical of putting just a few foundationless frames with a bunch of foundation. The bees want to make a certain percentage of drones. The foundation limits their ability to make drone comb. They will make burr comb if that's the only way they can make drones.... but if you put in a foundationless frame the first thing they will do with their new-found freedom is make drone comb. If you had only foundationless or a much larger percentage of foundationless, they would make maybe 10% drone comb. This is exactly why people who just dabble with foundationless get the mistaken idea that the bees will only make drone comb from foundationless.
FRAMEshift
Thanks for the explanation! Makes sense now.
In the late evenings, the bees will hover and fly around the hive. Crawl around the hive, hive stand and on the bottom of the SBB.
I would assume this is orientation flights for newly hatched bees?
The bees are lighter in color, is this the newly hatched? Will they darken with age?
30 days since package install; 25 days since queen cage removal.
1... Young bees are lighter. They will darken with age.
2... Keep in mind, the queen sent with a package is not the mother of the package bees. Her offspring will be different.
3... She was, hopefully, mated with 15 to 25 different drones. She may have a variety of different color bees.
The past three evenings I have noticed 1 to 3 dead bees on the SBB when I look under the hive.
Is this normal? This is the first time I have noticed this since package install.
Is this part of the life cycle? Is the hive busy with new brood and that part of house cleaning is not priority till brood is taken care of?
Bees die all the time. Who knows why they had not been cleaned up yet. I would not worry about it one bit. I would bet you that they are not there now. House bees clean up the hive and they know what they are doing.
Quote from: rail on June 14, 2011, 09:54:16 PM
In the late evenings, the bees will hover and fly around the hive. Crawl around the hive, hive stand and on the bottom of the SBB.
I would assume this is orientation flights for newly hatched bees?
Orientation flights tend to be mostly in the early afternoon, about 2-3 PM. They show a distinctive flight pattern where the bees fly back and forth in front of the entrance and they are facing the entrance as they fly.
In the early evening you will see bearding when the weather is hot and humid. Then the bees crawl around on the outside surface of the hive and cling to each other in big clumps.
Since 7:30 AM, the foragers have been bringing in pollen, still bringing it in this afternoon.
They have only consumed 4 oz. of 1:1 in five days.
They are shoving drones out the entrance?
Sounds like a picture perfect hive. Just continue to observe and enjoy.