Time Line

[iddee]

About the only thing you and I disagree on is the foundationless. I keep wired foundation at all times and even cross wire it and embed it. Once drawn out, I even cross wire my foundationless frames and press two drawn frames on each side of it. Then my foundationless is strong and perfectly straight.

Remember, ask 10 beekeepers how they do something and you will get 10 ways to do it. ALL ARE CORRECT.

[gww]

Iddee
I don't know that we dissagree on anything.  You have years of experiance and I have never saw a hive before and mostly only have you tube and internet and just really recently a guy that let me stand with him a couple of times while he went through a couple hives. 

I only got into the ideal of bees when I retired and was looking for things that interest me and keep me busy and at home.  I live on 20 acres and thought a milk cow was too much work.

I am cheep and so did it in a way that cost nothing but time till I can see if I have any tallent for it.

I have built for two winters and only have enough stuff built for about 6/8 full hives and some traps.  I am so slow but have the time due to being lucky enough to be retired. 

Every thing you say I listen to and try to decide if I am too lazy or not to put it into play.

I might be wiring frames some day but am a very slow learner on how to actually do stuff. 

Every peice of advice you throw out gets thought about, is apretiated and may even be done some day.
Cheers
gww

[Acebird]

It is not really good to do paper combine swarms if you leave the queens to fight it out.  You could lose both.

It is not really the same thing when you take swarms and put them in a box and every week go in tear down and restructure the comb because it isn't straight.  There is no way for anyone to know what resources these bees have not seeing your hives.  That being said I have taken a package and 2 nucs, given them straight foundation or comb and they have expanded in to full blown hives without feed.  But I didn't have to wreck what they built so they would have to start over or repair.
gww
Now assuming your swarms make it through winter you might get to see swarm cells next year.  When you purchase a queen one of the advantages you get is the breeding out of the swarm impulse.  It still happens but it is no ware as strong as a native swarm.

[gww]

Ace

It is not really good to do paper combine swarms if you leave the queens to fight it out.  You could lose both

I have heard this but have also read on randy olivers site and other places that usually if you let the bees pick, they pick the best one.  I was thinking that if one was a virgin when the combine happened that the virgin would probly win.  I do feel lucky that I have that other swarm still sitting in the trap "just in case", Though I might not know I am queenless till to late since at this time I can only see caped brood and have not yet developed a tallent for seeing eggs and larva.

Now assuming your swarms make it through winter you might get to see swarm cells next year.  When you purchase a queen one of the advantages you get is the breeding out of the swarm impulse.

I would not doubt that these bees could be wild or could be from someones managed hive.  I will have to see how it goes.  I am not much on buying anything if I can make it work but willing to if I get to frusterated.  The one hive I bought was from a local who I believe has mutts too.  I want to some day get some honey for my time but not so much that I have to work really hard selling it cause I am not a seller but more of a hermit.  More then anything right now I would like to someday get some honey and to never have to buy bees again and maby to not have to trap though it sure is neat when you get something in your trap.

I had 12 traps out last year and got nothing which is why I went ahead and bought some bees.  Then I caught some.  After I learn more my priorities might change.
Thanks
gww

[Acebird]

Though I might not know I am queenless till to late since at this time I can only see caped brood and have not yet developed a tallent for seeing eggs and larva.

Most likely you can see open brood (looks like white curled worms) but even still worker brood has to come from a mated queen.  So the only thing you have to learn is the difference between drone brood and worker brood.  When it is capped it is easy.
Now back to combining queens ... in the battle even the survivor can get hurt and if it was a virgin  that virgin has to make it back to the hive mated.  That is not guaranteed.  I wouldn't combine swarms.  I would let each one make a go of it because how they start is not necessarily how they end up. 

[gww]

Ace
Thje guy that I bought the hive from showed me some larva and I saw it when I was with him.  I even saw the queen in my small swarm before the combine because he saw it first and showed it to me.  On my own I don't have a practiced eye and expecially when the bees are festooning and drawing wax.  I am being so carefull trying to get the frames out and not break comb that everything else gets lost.  On the young hives I even have a bit of a hard time seeing caped brood cause it is not in the bigg, round, cover the majority of the center of the frame but more like in the center of a quarter of the frame that was drawn first and seems to be a little darker then the honey caps. 

Mostly for better or worse, since seeing a bit of capped brood in the bigg one and seeing the queen before the combine in the small one, I have not really looked at anything but rate of comb building, how strait it is and how much room they have.

I should have moved the outside frame in a bit but didn't like what the end of the comb at the end of the frame was doing and so didn't yet.  On the ones that have the outside frames built out, I find it hard to get the first frame out with gloves on without tearing stuff up.  I have the frames tight together but the honey bands on top are getting really wide anyway. 

I expect to get more practice at some of this stuff.

I wouldn't combine swarms.  I would let each one make a go of it because how they start is not necessarily how they end up.

I would have rather had four hives rather then three but keep thinking that there is a derth somewhere when they will quit drawing wax and that I need three mediums to winter with and I would rather have two hives survive and make a small split off them come spring than have 4 and only one live.  I really don't know what to expect and would error on the side of caution rather then have to buy more bees.

I have the small swarm still in the trap but it is almost summer solstice and I don't know what can and can not be done and as you said you can't see them so I just have to do my best guess and hope it works.

I don't even know the simple things like if I only had one medium built out would they have a better chance in winter being moved to 2 stack 5 frame nuc or left in what they put together or thrown in with something bigger and then taken out in spring. 

I just keep looking listening and expermenting and trying to not repeat mistake after I figure out it was a mistake.
Cheers
gww

[iddee]

BEGINNING>>>with foundationless is sooo much harder than beginning with foundation, that if you will PM me your address, I will send you 10 sheets of wired foundation. Once you try it in a box, I don't think you will ever start another box without it.

[Acebird]

BEGINNING>>>with foundationless is sooo much harder than beginning with foundation,

I have never done foundationless but judging from post on both forums I think your statement is correct.  If you were going to be a bee haver and just throw the bees in a box and walk away I think they would do fine.  But if you are going to start with an empty box and then try to train the bees to do what you want and you know nothing about bees your success rate might be a little on the disappointing side.  I agree with iddee, to start out do what is easiest and hope that you don't screw up too bad in the first year that you can expand and do what you think you want in the next years.

[gww]

Iddee
I love you for that man.  The hive I bought had 20 frames with foundation and the guy that sold it to me rolled his eyes knowing I was trying foundationless.  The only real problim is that I probly have 300 frames made altogether and I cut the top bar in a 45 degree angle to make the comb guide.  Lots of hours involved in making them.  This winter I may order some foundation when I get to making more frames if I don't get sidetracked with something that seems more important.  I made a band saw mill so I could cut my own lumber and sometimes get sidetracked to building things.  I have a 48 by 20 michine shed that I just got under roof and it still will need three sides some day maby.

I truly don't think I will sell much honey or bees and so I am trying to get what I get on a dime.  If I ever got to where I could sell something, I would get all the best stuff but except for my wife putting pressure on the kids like with eggs some times, I would have to do it on an honor stand type situation where poeple just leave their money and take what they want.  I don't want to be anti social but spent 30 years driving 3 hours a day so I could end up where I am and now I can't seem to make myself leave to mingle.  I look through junk for hours to keep from having to go to the store to by stuff I could get in twenty minutes.  If my wife didn't do the shopping I would probly buy everything on line and have it shipped to my house.  I think I might almost have a disease.

Every time I screw up a comb and have to try to fix it I do think I am an idiot though.  I also am always over confident in my abilities and usually proved not that smart.  I am going to try and make it to winter and then if things are going fairly well I may spring for some foundation and build some more frames. 

I am very proud to know you and that you would be helpful enough to give a compleete stranger like me something when trying to help.
I also hope you don't take badly my bull headedness to use what I have invested my time in (300 foundationless frames) as me not listening to good advice .  I want your advice and just cause I don't follow it today doesn't mean I won't never follow it.

I do figure that starting this way may really make me apretiate the switch if I ever get there. 

I do know that reading about things and thinking you know something helps a bit but doing it is always differrent when you really don't know what you are doing.  When I watched the guy who has kept bees for a long time, when he looked at a frame he knew what he was seeing and tried to show me some.  I still didn't see all he was seeing or understand well even though he was trying to show important things.  I get by myself and my understanding of what is really going on is even worse.  I am sure I will do this the hard long way like I do everything in my life.

Ace
I am a year behind cause I wanted to trap bees or get them local and it took me that long.  I had my stuff setting out for a year before getting to use it.

I won't change my mind for some time in making it work and am only in so much of a hurry cause I want to some day get it right but it is my excuse (like chickens) to stay home and not have to go on vacation or something.  I would if I made a little money give it to my wife as a bonus for being a worthless husband but don't want to start another career.  I don't want to spend so much that I have to get another job to support it.  I just want to piddle but would like to be just a tiny bit successful due to pride.  I am willing to take it slow and if I have set backs I will just be even a bit slower.  I have a love hate relation ship with all my projects.  Love the ideals, hate the work but always finnish due to the pride factor.

I do appretiate you though Iddee and ace.
Thanks
gww

Ps  Iddee, I would ask what foundation you are using.  I keep hearing everybody that is using plastic has to wax them which I don't have the resources to do and that sounds like a lot of work too.

[Acebird]

don't take badly my bull headedness to use what I have invested my time in (300 foundationless frames) as me not listening to good advice .

You don't need that many to start.  You can add wax foundation to 10-20 foundationless frames.  Get them drawn out and filled and then use the foundationless in between your drawn out frames.

[iddee]

I use crimp wired wax foundation. If you have 20 drawn out combs now, just add a foundationless frame tightly between two of them. They will draw it straight. Then add another. Soon you will have nice, straight combs in the hives. I would also run a couple wires crossways of the foundationless frames, as they will draw wax straight down across the wires and give the comb extra strength.

A piece of burr comb wax the size of a ping pong ball rubbed along the edge of your 45 degree edge will also help them start the comb straight.

[gww]

Ace and iddee
I just looked in the hive again today.  The hive that I bought that has the foundation in it that I pulled the one brood frame up to and empty box is drawing great comb on each side of the foundation frame.  They had about 5 or 6 frames drawn out now to about 70 percent done.  I took two of the outside frames and put then inside those 6 frames.  Sorta like EHEBBBEHHE or something like that.  I must say that those frames that are drawn seem to be my best ones.  Lots of bees in this hive though.

The small swarm that I had combined together is actually doing worse than I had thought.  It still has only about 60 to 70 percent of the frames drawn out.  I did not see any larva and seen some capped brood some of which has been hatching I think.  It has empty cells through out the brood and there seems to be a hole at the bottom of some of these open cells that goes all the way through.  I don't know if this hive has a queen now or not.  The way the bees were acting makes me think that they still have a queen cause they were pretty calm.  This hive even with the extra bees does not forage at the rate the other two hives do.    I used straw in the smoker today and it burnt through it lots faster then other things I have used so this hive was open longer then need be so I guess I decided I seen what I would see.  Wether it was dumb or smart, I pulled the best looking frame up to the next box.  They were probly not ready but I didn't want to take the second box off that I had used when doing the paper combine so thought I would put a better ladder to it then the little bit of comb I have rubberbanded from the swarm.

The last one had started on the frames to the side of the one I had pulled up on it. It had replaced the bur comb that was branching out from one wall of the box and I scraped it off again.  What I have found so far with adding bees to empty boxes is that they seem to start on one end of the bar and draw the most perfect comb to about half way the lenght of the bar and then start to curl off to one side towards the other bar.  The first two or three weeks I was thinking man I got this dicked, they are drawing perfect.  I probly killed a couple of bees today.  I took the putty knife and crunched the part of the comb that started widening toward the next bar on about three frames.  They get further and further off the closer you get to the edge.  It was full of honey that squished out.  I know one big blob of honey took out a glob of bees and sent them to the bottom board.  I did take the bur comb that I broke off and rubbed it along the edge of the frame closest to the wall that the comb was on.

I have the twenty frames with foundation but they are part of the brood box that is the hive that I bought.  I do agree that the frames being built around the frame with foundation are straiter and a bit thinner and uniform compared to the totally foundationless hives.

I did watch a couple of vidios on wiring frames and also think that a few of the frames in the beginning that I actually knocked the whole comb off and had to try and rubberband in would probly not have happenned if I would have had a wired frame.  I didn't do it today but last inspection when I had 2 combs drifting over to the other frame, I wrapped some cotton thread around it before I tried to minipulate it.  I do think if I get a couple of foundation frames that I could move them around for guides.  I have a hard time taking the frames that are already in the hive brood nest out cause it is the one hive that almost has three mediums on it and so my best hope for being ready for winter no matter how the swarms end up.

I find that every time I close the hive up I think of things that might have been tried when I had it opened.  I was also wondering what I would do to the bee space if I flipped every other one of the drifting comb frames so that there would be a strait side facing an empty portion of the frame. 

There is a differrance of how and how full the bees on foundation are building the foundationless frames.  They seem to be being built full on all four sides.

I guess I am going to have to watch a couple more you tube vidios on wiring and wired foundation.
Thanks
gww

Ps Just like looking in the hive, I always think of things I could have said better or could have added but type so slow that it takes forever to say anything.  I am a high school drop out that joined the army at 17 and so please forgive how bad I am at this typing and spelling thing.