BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > NATURAL & ORGANIC BEEKEEPING METHODS

Natural cell frames from last year for honey supers?

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tillie:
Last year I put thin surplus foundation in my honey supers.  The bees stored honey and I harvested via crush and strain.  I saved the frames with the remnants of comb in the freezer (after putting them back on the hives for the bees to clean out).  Today I put those empty frames with the remnants as a guide on my strong hive to store honey. 

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

I am in the process of converting to all medium boxes and (if my daughter's boyfriend can help me), I'll cut the boxes I'm using this year down to eight frames, but at the moment I'm using shallows for honey with this remnant comb.

Linda T freezing in Atlanta

Kirk-o:
I think thats a good Idea I don't know what size they will Draw.You could measure it.Michael bush has on his site how to measure I think.Are you bees large cell bees?The other thing is this honey and wax should be clean of chemicals if you don't treat your bees.You could mention to people you give or cell honey to that this honey is from bees that haven't been treated
kirk-o

Understudy:
Sounds like you are doing fine. The frames should be fine to use. And cutting down to mediums will make life easier.

I had my beekeeper meeting on Friday. We had a visitor from Chattanoga, TN. . Very nice gentleman. He has been in beekeeping for 20 years +. He is now on his way to converting to mediums. Why? Because after 20 + years his back is giving him problems and he doesn't want to aggravate it. But he likes beekeeping. Sound familar Michael?

Sincerely,
Brendhan

Kirk-o:
Good idea I use mediums also .Dee Lusby in Arizona has all deeps and runs 900 hives I don't know how she does it
kirk-o

tillie:
Kirk-o, 

I haven't treated my bees in any way - only used powdered sugar to get them to groom off the mites - and am now in the process of moving to small cell. 

The hive I put these empty frames on has small cell in the deep (next to the large cell nuc frames they came in) and small cell (or whatever they are drawing) in the medium above the deep.  So I didn't want to mess up the process in any way with the
conversion/regression to small cell.

Linda T

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