The Beautiful Honeycomb

[Joseph Clemens]

Honeycomb, one of the amazing and wonderful beauties of the hive:

[JP]

Joseph, you really have some busy bees there!


...JP

[Understudy]

They did that awfully quick.

darn nice.

Sincerely,
Brendhan

[taipantoo]

Joseph,

What was used as a starter in the frame?
Unless it's an optical illusion, the cell size of the burr comb seems to be much smaller than the comb in the frame.
Cell size is very interesting to me.
May I have your permission to post your picture on another bee keeping forum?

[Joseph Clemens]

Joseph,

What was used as a starter in the frame?
Unless it's an optical illusion, the cell size of the burr comb seems to be much smaller than the comb in the frame.
Cell size is very interesting to me.
May I have your permission to post your picture on another bee keeping forum?

The comb in the frame was started with a very small strip of regular 5.4 mm beeswax foundation. The bees drew most of the frame is drone sized cells (with most of those filled with nectar or honey), the corner on the right in the photo are worker size and contain worker brood. The pieces of burr comb are approximately 4.9 mm cell size, some are a little larger, some are a little bit smaller.

One thing that I find curious, is that pollen never seems to find its way into drone cells. Even on combs where most of the central and lower portions are drone cells, with the first inch or two from the top bar and two-three inch wide edges of worker cells, all of the pollen is concentrated in the worker cells near the end bars, with honey in the upper band of worker cells and then the drone cells are filled with drone brood.

[buckbee]

This is what can happen if you do the same thing in a brood chamber. Note not only smaller cells, but different sized cells:



(apparently I don't qua;ify to embed images, so you know what to do)

[Joseph Clemens]

Let's see if I can get it to work ---

This is what can happen if you do the same thing in a brood chamber. Note not only smaller cells, but different sized cells:



(apparently I don't qua;ify to embed images, so you know what to do)

[bassman1977]

Holy smokes!  Whoops.  You can see the small cells for sure.  Are those Carnies, buckbee?

[buckbee]

Not Carnies - they are local Buckfast x whatever mongrels! (Hive situated about 3 miles from Buckfast Abbey)
Not my bees, might I add - as I only use TBHs these days - but one of our association members.

Photo taken 2006. Thanks for sorting the link, Joseph.

[bassman1977]

Very cool.  I would love to visit Buckfast Abbey some day.