Foundationless Progress

bailey · June 11, 2011, 06:57:07 PM

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

rbinhood · June 11, 2011, 07:02:12 PM

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.

MTWIBadger · 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?

FRAMEshift · June 12, 2011, 10:46:32 AM

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.

MTWIBadger · June 12, 2011, 09:10:08 PM

FRAMEshift

Thanks for the explanation! Makes sense now.

rail · 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?

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.

iddee · June 15, 2011, 12:27:45 AM

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.

rail · June 15, 2011, 09:45:32 PM

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?

AllenF · June 15, 2011, 10:23:04 PM

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.

FRAMEshift · June 16, 2011, 12:41:42 AM

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.

rail · June 17, 2011, 03:47:06 PM

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?

iddee · June 17, 2011, 05:02:23 PM

Sounds like a picture perfect hive. Just continue to observe and enjoy.