Foundationless

[alfred]

   Just checked the progress of my hives yesterday. I had put ten foundationless frames into one of the hives. I interspersed them into two boxes with already drawn plastic pf120's. Wow did they draw that out fast!! It is amazing! 8 of the ten were almost completely drawn out. The 9th was about 1/3 filled and on the 10th frame I found them festooning. Very cool! All of this in the time my other two strong hives had drawn out only 3 frames on new pf120's!

  Some of the frames I put in had wax starter strips and some had popsicle sticks, hard to tell which is which at this point except on the two that are not fully drawn and as for them there is one of each. I think for the next ones I will simply take the wedge piece and turn it on edge and staple it in then I will probably brush a little wax on.

  The comb they made was different. I was expecting smaller cell but they made huge drone size, which they are filling with nectar like there is no tomorrow! the cells are angled up more as well. Of course I am seeing a lot of drones right now and a lot of drone cells throughout my hives but they are filling this comb with nectar. Camera batteries were dead or I would have gotten pics.

  I have a split that I did a couple of weeks ago and two new swarms and I think that I will try to do one of these all foundationless. I will see how they do without the pf120's interspersed. Of course these hives currently have plastic in them 1 box each. I will simply put the foundationless on top then later if I want I can rotate the pf120's out. I run all mediums which makes this easier to do.


  Right now I'm thinking I should have bought more empty frames and not so many plastic ones.!? No problem I will use both.

Alfred

[JP]

Hey Alfred honey storage cells are larger than drone cells, they are in fact the largest cells bees will make.


...JP