Foundationless Frame Pictures

[Rod Weakley]

Many of you know I am switching to foundationless frames as a way to progress to small cell size and hopefull defeat the mites. I have some pictures up I thought some of you might like to see.

http://www.geocities.com/rwjedi2002/foundationless.html

Let me know if you have any problems with the link, or questions for that matter.

[Lori McAllister]

Good pictures!

[drobbins]

Rod,

I'm trying to do the same thing
thanx for posting the pics

Dave

[Robert Hawkins]

Rod, I'm trying something similar and couldn't view the pick. You've exceeded your data transfer limtit. I'll try again tomorrow.

Hawk

[dickm]

Good Pix
I'm doing the same thing. I wired the frames and as they build, they incorporate the wire. Then I'll be able to put them in the extractor. Are you giving them a hive full of starter strips or are you sandwiching them between drawn frames?

Dickm

[Robert Hawkins]

Dickm et al, From what I read the bees only attach to the bottom of the strip instead of building it out like I would expect them to. So the answer looks like "sandwich". Also MB says to bevel the bottom of the Top Bar but I can't find any good pics of this. Have you seen any? What angles? The reason I said similar is I want to just use Top Bars without the frame.

Hawk

[Lew Best]

Hey Rod

Looks You got the bees trained right! Nope mine do as well with starter strips; put some on today to see what happens!

Lew

[Robert Hawkins]

Lew, you're the man. Do they attach just at the bottom of the starter strip?

Hawk

[Ross]

www.myoldtools.com/sled1.jpg (http://www.myoldtools.com/sled1.jpg)
www.myoldtools.com/sled2.jpg (http://www.myoldtools.com/sled2.jpg)
www.myoldtools.com/sled4.jpg (http://www.myoldtools.com/sled4.jpg)
www.myoldtools.com/sled5.jpg (http://www.myoldtools.com/sled5.jpg)

This is how I do it. I don't bother to glue in the triangle anymore. I set the saw to 45 degrees. You can go back to foundation anytime with a wedge.

[Robert Hawkins]

Thanks a bunch Ross. I've been looking for that for a month. How tall is a top bar. I know the 1 1/4 and 1 1/2 answer. But what's the height? This is gonna be fun.

Hawk

[Rod Weakley]

All of mine except for a couple I forgot to do. I ordered Wedge type frames and then took the wedge part off, turned it 90 degrees and then glued and stapled it to the top of the frame. The bees attach to this formerly wedge piece and it ends up being pretty close to centered. As you can see they do pretty good work. I've had a few where I tried to do too many at one time where they would draw over into the next frames space, but if you do them between brood frames it seems to work great.

[Joel]

Hawk, are you and the others doing this for small cell mite control? Are you using this now and are you having success? How do you manipulate full frames?

[Robert Hawkins]

Not till next week Joel. Partly for mite control partly cuz I can't see paying for foundation that may have poison in it. If I just make my own Top Bars I know my hives are chemical free. And it saves a lot of money. A lot. Manipulate with care. You mean are the combs gonna break when I pick em up? I'm careful now with frames and foundations. just don't turn em sideways.

Hawk

[Rod Weakley]

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/rwjedi/th_foundationless4.jpg (http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/rwjedi/foundationless4.jpg)
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/rwjedi/th_foundationless3.jpg (http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/rwjedi/foundationless3.jpg)
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/rwjedi/th_foundationless2.jpg (http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/rwjedi/foundationless2.jpg)
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/rwjedi/th_foundationless1.jpg (http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/rwjedi/foundationless1.jpg)

Let's see if this works.

[Ross]

Once they are attached at the top and bottom, I can pretty well handle them like any other frame.