From: Erik Osterlund <honeybee@elgon.se>
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:31:01 +0100
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Queen breeders

Do you have any data Dave?

Lusbys said they sometimes have even 12-14% moisture content in their
honey, that is very low, And they use tangential extractors. I do to,
extracted honey from 4.8 frames with no problems at all last summer. One
thing I saw was that the frames were much stronger, even as newly built ,
due to the many wax walls. One advantage more is that in areas where you may have problems with high moisture content in honey, like here i sweden in late summer, the many more wax walls give more evaporation area for moisture per frame, which most likely will lessen the risk with fermented honey. Less honey in 4.9 than in 5.7 frame? Yes, most probably, but how much? Does it matter`It of course also depends on the managing system how much it matters.

Erik

----
> Something that nobody has mentioned yet! The difficulty of extracting
>these smaller cells. It's hard enough to empty regular worker cells
>without a large many framed extractor, these small cells will be almost
>impossible. One reason we use drone foundation in our honey supers, they
>extract faster.
>As to quantity of honey. It stands to reason you'll have less honey per
>frame, there are more cell walls and smaller holes, needing more wax to
>draw them out.
>Regards Dave E....