First hives -- foundation recommendations

[MistyZ]

I'm starting with my first two hives this spring in southern Michigan. A great Michigan beekeeper on this site offered to set me up with 4 deeps, 2 five frame nucs of carniolans on drawn duragilt foundation as a gift to help a beginner get started. I'm pretty excited by his generosity.

My question is: I still need to buy the supers with frames/foundation. I'm interested in going with small cell for mite control, but the deeps will be all large cell to start.

What kind of foundation and frames should I get for the supers? Should I buy large cell foundation for the supers, and then introduce small cell to the center of the brood nest slowly, or buy small cell for the supers and try to switch it all over at the same time?

Since I can also rent an extractor from the local bee club, I plan on extracting the honey, and am inclined to use a queen excluder since I won't have all medium boxes. (2 deeps for brood nest and medium supers)

Thanks for all the help on this site!!!

[Michael Bush]

>I'm pretty excited by his generosity.

That was generous.

>My question is: I still need to buy the supers with frames/foundation.

If all goes well you'll need more room before the year is over. Yes, you'll need boxes and frames.

>I'm interested in going with small cell for mite control, but the deeps will be all large cell to start.

Yes but you'll have bees to start. smile.gif

>What kind of foundation and frames should I get for the supers? Should I buy large cell foundation for the supers, and then introduce small cell to the center of the brood nest slowly, or buy small cell for the supers and try to switch it all over at the same time?

I'd just buy small cell for everything unless you're doing cut comb. Then I might go for Kelly's 7/11 surplus.

What to buy for supers is up to you. I'd convert to all mediums if it was me (I did). But mediums are a nice standard size you can use for cut comb, extracting, or brood.

>Since I can also rent an extractor from the local bee club, I plan on extracting the honey,

Then I'd go all small cell and see what they draw in the supers. Anything smaller than 5.4mm is going in the right direction and can be useful later to regress other hives. Well, if you go with mediums anyway. smile.gif

>and am inclined to use a queen excluder since I won't have all medium boxes. (2 deeps for brood nest and medium supers)

Even when I had two deeps for brood (for 27 years) I never used an excluder. I think part of needing one is that the queen is either needing the room, in which case I'd rather she layed in the supers than swarmed, or she's desperate for some drone to lay in. The lack of drone cells is OUR fault. We give them nothing but worker comb and wonder why she would lay a patch of drone brood up in the top super. It's because she couldn't find anywhere else to lay it. The bees would prefer a consolidated brood nest, but they also HAVE to make some drones. It's in their blood.

Dee Lusby cuts the bottom 1/2" off of the foundation so they can make drone comb on the bottom of every frame. I always left whatever drone comb they build in the brood chamber. I put it toward the outside of the nest so they can fill it with honey or use it for drones.

[GreenMountainRose]

I don't believe that this is ideal, but would it work to use small cell foundation in the brood chamber, a queen excluder, and then standard foundation in the honey supers? Would this cause a problem to the regression of the hive?

[Michael Bush]

I don't think so. I've done it while I was regressing so I could swap out combs and the queen wouldn't lay in them. But then I phased out all the large as they emptied them out or I stole the honey.