Frames

Hive A has delivered another super of honey. Unfortunately it is crooked and cross-combed.

The bees built the comb relatively quickly. I'm not certain why it isn't straight. Strong nectar flows induce the bees to build on several frames at once and I think this encourages straight comb.

There are a couple of options for extracting the honey. It can be cut out into plastic boxes or pressed using an apple press. Neither option returns reusable comb which is disappointing.

I've made a small adjustment to the Commercial frames which should work just as well in an National deep (brood) box.

I took an old National brood frame and removed the two bars which are set at the bottom. These are 6mm x 8mm x 360mm. I cut them into 4 equal 90mm lengths. I glued and nailed these to the sides of the top bars. I made these adjustments to 3 of the frames.

The result is that the frames are spaced at 12mm apart instead of 8mm. The Commercial box fits 11 instead of 12 frames.

Hive E was populated from a feral swarm at the very start of August 2016. Eight months have elapsed since they were moved from the Nucleus hive into a National brood body. Yesterday I opened up.

The purpose of the inspection was two-fold: to check the condition of the colony and to reconfigure the hive.

Thorne, the equipment supplier, have been sending newsletters recently. The latest contains an interesting article about increasing the number of drones in a hive.

I stopped putting foundation in my hives a while ago (see Frames without foundation). Foundation seems unnecessary to the low intervention bee keeper. Its principal benefit is to make extraction and inspection easier. I outlined in the article how shallow frames can be extracted without wired foundation. Inspection is also much the same. You just have to be slower and more gentle.

Foundation is a layer of wax which is placed in a frame. It is printed with hexagonal cell guides. The bees build their comb from it into the spaces between the frames. As far as I know nearly everyone who uses framed hives uses foundation.