Wanting to get more drawn comb

[retsofmit]

Howdy!

I am just coming out of my first winter of bee keeping here in Central TX.  I started with one hive last spring...I know should have done two.  I am managing my hive in one deep and one medium and did not take any honey last year.  I am hoping to harvest honey this year.

I would like to get some more drawn comb this year so I have something for my splits to work with when I do split later.  I am curious y'all would recommend me putting on a second brood box with just heavy waxed foundation below my medium super to get the bees to draw it out and then I have a second brood box to put my split in to?  Or will the foundation only box be disliked by the bees and cause them to ignore everything above it. 

Thoughts?
Thanks!

[FloridaGardener]

Personally the bees I have hate foundation.  They like their own comb.  They will waste wax and make weird squiggles on any foundation I try.

So I would put the inner lid (with an opening) on top of the hive, and feed.  Put an empty hive body on inner lid. Use a quart jar with holes poked in the lid, using a push pin. 

Check every day or two to refill the quart jar.  You probably don't even need to smoke, to peek in and refill.

Never open feed. Never use a boardman feeder unless for water.

Mix 1:1  white cane sugar with 60 mg zinc per 2 lbs of sugar.  (That's the minimum needed for proper larval development.)
Don't heat the syrup above 120 degrees. (You'll create a chemical called HMF which is bad for bees.)   

The bees can feed after sundown.  They can feed when it's raining.  They can feed if the flow stops.  Remember, comb is fat.  So when they run out of places to put the sugar, they build fat.   

[FloridaGardener]

I just use a gel-cap with 60-mg zinc supplement in it, the one I take if I feel I'm getting a cold.  Maybe Vitacost or Target.
Open it up and put it in the sugar syrup.

   https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/eea.12342

Honey or pollen with a Zn content of <30 mg kg−1 was insufficient to satisfy the maintenance nutritional requirements of bees that were not raising larvae. It therefore seems advisable to supply supplementary Zn to non‐brooding colonies when the Zn content of honey or pollen is <30 mg kg−1. Honey or pollen with a Zn content of 60 mg kg−1 was sufficient to satisfy the nutritional requirements for royal jelly production and to improve the health of larvae. It may therefore also be advisable to provide supplementary Zn to colonies with larvae when the Zn content of honey or pollen is <60 mg kg−1.

[The15thMember]

Bees need 3 conditions to draw comb, there needs to be a nectar flow, it needs to be warm enough for them to secrete wax, and they need to feel they are out of space (people also sometimes include a 4th, bees of wax producing age, but older workers will revert to producing wax in an emergency).  If one of these conditions isn't met the bees probably won't draw.  If you don't have a nectar flow you'll need to feed them.  Most people feed 1:1 syrup in the spring, with or without additives, but of course be sure it's warmed up enough so the bees can use it, and obviously so the bees are unclustered.  But if they have empty comb in the hive to fill, they still won't draw until they've used up that space first.  I am also foundationless, so I can't speak to issues with bees rejecting foundation.  If you are having trouble, you can always wait and have the hive and the split draw new comb when you split them.  As long as it's warm and there's a flow by then, the split will obviously feel out of space, since they won't have much drawn comb.         

[Oldbeavo]

Bees only draw comb when they need it, more space will not make them draw comb
You need a nectar flow and they have run out of space in their present box/super.
Bees only do things they need to do.

[Michael Bush]

Even feeding constantly will probably slow them down on drawing comb because they will draw it and fill it all with syrup and the queen will have nowhere to lay which sets the colony back.  About the only way feeding works out to get more comb is to either feed with something that slowly feeds (jars with few holes in them) or do cycles of feeding and letting it run out for a few days so the bees can catch up and the queen can lay and then feeding again after she's laid up a lot of brood.

[Brian MCquilkin]

Adding undrawn foundation to the brood nest during a flow works well for me. Basically, checkerboarding the brood nest 2 double deep brood boxes with a queen excluder on top. supper on top of the queen excluder. The queen excluder keeps the queen down to the 2 bottom boxes. bees don't like empty frames in the brood nest so they draw them out real fast.