BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > NATURAL & ORGANIC BEEKEEPING METHODS

Natural cell frames from last year for honey supers?

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Kirk-o:
Good Idea keep up the good beekeeping.Have you ever read anything by Charles
Martin Simmon?He writes about Beekeeping Backwards you would Like it .Its in the Points of View section of the old Beesource web page.
kirk-o

Michael Bush:
>I think this means that with only the comb remnants to use as a guide, the bees will draw natural cell.

By definition it will be natural cell.  If the frames were in the brood nest and you had small cell bees they would probably be in the range of 4.6mm to 5.0mm.  But since you're putting them in the supers and the bees are drawing them to store honey in they will probably be larger.

> Or since these frames were originally started as large cell, will the guides of last year's comb mean that the bees think large rather than small cell?

That will be irrelevant.  The use they intend them for will be the deciding factor.

tillie:
Thanks, Kirk-o, I just read the article on BeeSource and I really liked it.  He and Michael think alike - "Everything works if you let it...."  sounds similar to what I just read by Charles Martin Simon.

Thanks, again, Michael, for the continuing help.  I'm going to order Brushy Mountain's 8 frame mediums for my boxes going forward so I won't be distinguishing between deep, medium and super.  That makes more sense - and I realize the bees, although I am putting this box on as a honey super, may as they did last year, use it as a brood chamber.  In that case, I hope they draw smaller cells.

Last year my bees moved into the honey supers and started raising brood there.  With an idea of regressing to small cell (or at least in this first phase, smaller cell) raising bees in cells originally drawn for honey will mean they raise larger bees?

Linda T

Kirk-o:
I found when I read Charles Simmon And Michael Bush and Dee Lusby beekeeping becme more of a experience.It turned in to observeing the obvious It became fun again.I was feeling like a para medic or a emergency room technition instead of enjoying beekeeping.All the expertise in the world is not a substitute for observation

Kirk-o

Michael Bush:
>With an idea of regressing to small cell (or at least in this first phase, smaller cell) raising bees in cells originally drawn for honey will mean they raise larger bees?

If they move the brood nest up into larger cells, yes.  Sometimes they do.  Usually the queen prefers to lay in natural sized brood cells to larger honey storage cells.

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