Depth of comb.

[OPAVP]

Hi guys,  I have question: It seems more or less standard to have frames placed 35 mm(about !' and 3/8th.)

How far apart can you place frames in the box,to get the widest,thickest frames with honey?That is before they start building brace comb?

Any ideas?

I made boxes out of 2" Styrofoam.I can get 8 brood frames in there. I am thinking about easiest way of uncapping with thick combs.
Mind you,that issue doesnt need to be solved till next summer!

Regards,
Cor Van Pelt.

[BlueBee]

I just go with n-1 honey frames in a n sized box.  Not sure how many mm that turns out to be.  I've seen some pretty thick natural comb so I'm sure you could go wider than n-1 if you wanted.  The natural stuff I've seen had to be at least 50mm thick.

As for the brood combs, yes the 35mm spacing is the standard.  However I did listen to Mr Bush and did some experimenting with 32mm brood frame spacing for my jumbo frames.  It was a HUGE benefit for those large combs.  The problem with 35mm spacing is the bees will build the honey at the top of the frames out deeper than they do the brood cells.  So you end up with uneven combs that makes it difficult to get large combs out of a box, re-arrange them, and even pick them up!  IMO, this isn't really a problem with an all medium setup, or even deeps, but when the combs start getting huge, it's a big benefit to have them all flat and 32mm space achieve that. 

I run medium frame nucs and I don't alter the standard frames (35mm) since I don't think it's worth the effort in that configuration.  All my jumbo frames have 32mm spacing though.

[Jim134]

     You do realize most all commercial be keepers run 9 frames in a 10 frame box equally space.
the first thing they will do is run 10 frames in a 10 frame box after they get drawn out the first time when they will go to 9 frames they will do this  both in the brood chamber and in the honey supers.One thing to remember they do used automatic cappers and they will have cap spinners as well also the reason why they use 9 in the brood chamber is because they feel they have a less of a chance rolling a queen.


        BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)

[jayj200]

A friend, a new bee, just like me, last year he set out a swarm trap.

it had top bars and they were wider than normal. the bees made (honey comb) seamed like two inches wide. this may have bee both sides of the comb.

2 inches is wide, as top bars are usually 1 5/8". Yes? could have been wider

[Michael Bush]

>How far apart can you place frames in the box,to get the widest,thickest frames with honey?That is before they start building brace comb?

Reliably?  I've seen spacers that put 8 frames in a ten frame box and once you have drawn comb it seems fairly reliable (with drawn comb).  If you are going for the Guinness book of world records, then start with drawn comb and space it eight to a ten frame box.  As the comb gets drawn out more to meet in the middle, pull another frame out and space it out again.  When it gets close to meeting (3/8" from each other) do it again.  I've seen comb that was almost 3" before... I bet you can duplicate that...