How to transition from Honey Super Cell to Foundationless?

[BEE BOB]

Hi all,

If I use Honey Super Cell 4.9 for a new package of bees in my brood area of the hive to get small bees right away, how do I go about transitioning the brood area to foundationless frames? What would be the timing and logistical aspects?

The stuff is so expensive that I would like to pull it out and have it available for new hives in the future.

Also, since I'm going to cut them down to fit inside of a medium super, do I buy the total number of slots needed, or can I somehow use the wasted 3" in wooden frames to reduce the amount that I buy? If I use 8-frames per tier, how many HSCs will I need per hive before I can transition into foundationless? How do you all do it?

Thanks for the info.

[betrbekepn]

http://bwrangler.farvista.net/sxpe.htm
Read this website if you haven't already.

>transitioning the brood area to foundationless frames? What would be the timing and logistical aspects?

There is two ways to go about it. You could do a shake down or feed empty frames into the center of the broodnest. Bees build small cell comb in the spring. Bees focus on building larger sized cells during summer and fall.

>cut HSCs down to fit inside of a medium super
use the wasted 3" in wooden frames

I would leave the 3" gap so they have somewhere to build drone comb.

[ January 30, 2007, 11:52 AM: Message edited by: betrbekepn ]

[Michael Bush]

I think the easiest is to put the bees in a nuc on four or five frames (depending on the size of the nuc) until they are using all the HSC. Then move that into a larger box with foundationless frames.

Once you have some brood that has been raised in the small cells building comb you can go to the foundationless.

[drobbins]

here are a few pics of my hacks at cutting it down to mediums

http://www.drobbins.net/bee's/hsc/

my plan is to put a couple of packages on it this year and build them up to full hives of HSC
next year I'm going to use them to produce SC comb by inserting empty frames in the hive which I hope will be drawn out nicely since they'll be between 2 perfectly flat SC combs
(I'll probably try a little of that this year)
I have no idea how this will work and I may change my plan, but right now that's the road I'm heading down

Dave

[Sundance]

".......I'm going to use them to produce SC comb..
..."

That's what I'm going to try as well. I haven't
decided to slide in SC foundation or empty
frames. Hoping it will be like having a SC
comb factory. smile.gif

[BEE BOB]

Thanks all.

[Ellen]

I like Michael's idea of putting them in nucs first to get used to the HSC.

Has anyone tried cutting down a styrofoam nuc to be a medium?

http://www.betterbee.com/products.asp?dept=304

[chinitoe]

drobbins,

how do you attach the cut hsc to the wooden frames?

[drobbins]

chinitoe

read through this thread

http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=12;t=000972

It'll answer any questions

Dave