Foundation Switch

[ccwonka]

Okay, so I have two hives made from nucs in late May.  The nucs came with already drawn foundation on the three frames.  The hive bodies I installed them in had seven additional new frames of pierco plastic.  I sprayed them liberaly with sugar water.  The bees still wanted to build burr comb between them instead of drawing them out, and had made patheticaly small progress for such BUSY little bees :(, so . . .

Last week I opend the hives and replaced the frames . . . the three origional nuc frames I spaced out  with wood frames with 3" of wax foundation strip coming down from the top bar, I moved the two pierco frames that they had finnaly started drawing out (poorly) to the outside (I hated to throw away the work they had done!).  I did this with both hives, so I ended up with approximately:
1- plastic
2- wax strip
3- origional nuc
4- wax strip
5 - origional nuc
6- wax strip
7 - origional nic
8 -wax strip
9 - plastic
10 - wax strip

I looked in two days ago (without pulling frames, just to see what they were up to) and it appeared that they had drawn comb out to some extent on almost every single side of every piece of foundation, so I added my second story yesterday (going with two deeps for the hive, if/when I get to supers they'll be mediums).  I also removed the entrance reducer so I could re-install a boardman feeder in the entrance in case they wanted to draw extra for what seems to be a comb frenzy, but they aren't really touching the syrup (quart jars and they're down MAYBE 1" today).  It's funny though, with the reducer out the traffic looks just as heavy across the whole board as it did in just that 2" hole before.  I'm debating cutting down the entrance reducers so that they fit WITH the boardman in place, even if I only normaly use it for water (we have a pool).

[Ross]

You are adding space way too fast in my opinion.  Bees need to be a bit crowded to thrive and to keep out pests like SHB.  When they have completely drawn and covered with bees 80% of the hive space, then add another super. 

[derrick1p1]

I agree.  I expanded a hive that to quickly and fixed this yesterday.  The vigor just didn't seem right and didn't look to be enough bees to cover each super.  I could tell there weren't enough from making this mistake before and inviting unwanted guests (wax moths).  I'd rather have them a little bit crowded rather than the alternative and end up with bigger problems.

I too plan to switch to go foundationless.  It seems to take the bees quite some time to decide to draw on it, even with enticing and a heavy flow.  But left to their own accord, they seem to draw it much faster.

Best of luck,
Derrick