Stater Strips and wired frames

[R.L. Bee]

I'me thinking about starting to use starter strips in all my hives. Is that something that will work or can it turn into a absolute disaster.Please give all comments good and bad.Also can thin surplus be used for the strips.

[Dave W]

R.L. Bee . . .

Starter strips WILL work. You will read in many books about "absolute disaster", but if you do a search here (starter strips, foundationless, etc) you will find that MANY beekeepers have great success.

>can thin surplus be used for the strips . . .
Most anything will suffice, even thin strips of wood. :)

[Michael Bush]

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfoundationless.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm

[Ruben]

I use them and love them. Fix ten frames up for the cost of one.

[xC0000005]

I use them as well. The problems I have with them is that they are NOT a good way to start out if you aren't comfortable saying "Nope, that's wrong" and cutting out cross drawn comb. If you have even one correctly drawn frame the strips work much, much better, if you tie in one comb right it can be a guide to the rest. I do so not so much for the cost as that I figure the bees know how to make their comb perfectly well. They've had millions of years practice. If you wire the frames they draw the comb right through the wires. Just be sure the hive is level side to side.

[AstroBee]

I don't use much comb from starter strips, but I've always had the concern that if you started a colony on starter strips only, you'll end up with frames of very limited mobility. That is, the outer frames will not be well suited for brood frames due to their larger cell size. This would really limit how you can move frames around. I'd expect that you'd only get four (maybe five) small cell frames when starting a colony with starter strips. Again, my experience is very limited, so I may be all wrong.

[inga]

I don't use much comb from starter strips, but I've always had the concern that if you started a colony on starter strips only, you'll end up with frames of very limited mobility. That is, the outer frames will not be well suited for brood frames due to their larger cell size. This would really limit how you can move frames around. I'd expect that you'd only get four (maybe five) small cell frames when starting a colony with starter strips. Again, my experience is very limited, so I may be all wrong.
Okay, I confess I have no experience, except reading & direct observation.

We just bought a couple of hives which included some old comb -- most of it on plastic foundation and some of it on wax foundation. And I saw that bees draw drone comb just about any place they please. I saw one frame on plastic foundation with a lot of drone comb, for instance. (I culled out one deep of comb from my hive and put on a medium super of HSC mixed with empty frames with starter strips. I'm hoping the empty frames will entice the workers and the queen upwards. Hubby's hive still has all the comb in it.)

If the bees are given a little more freedom, I'm hoping they'll draw drone comb towards the outside edges of the brood nest. It may very well be just as easy or easier to keep track of the drone comb than on foundation.

[Ruben]

My experience Astrobee is that they don't even draw the outside frames until you move them one at a time to the inside. I have never fed them starter strips early in the spring so like MB said they need lots of drones now so they may draw out a lot more drone cells in early spring.

[Dave W]

>frames of very limited mobility . . . this would really limit how you can move frames around . . .

Once you and your bees have the "perfect" nest, why move anything :)

[AstroBee]

Guess its a management style thing with me. I don't believe that I have a single hive today that has all the original frames in their original positions. I have a tendency to swap things around a lot, either to support weak hives or to open up the broodnest with drawn comb. So do the people running with frames drawn out from starter strips "lock" in the position of the frames, or are there techniques available to get mostly worker-sized comb? Maybe my timing or technique is all wrong, as Ruben suggests. The few times I've attempted it resulted in what I consider as comb of VERY limited utility, some worker-sized cells, but mostly drone comb. I have four of five frames like this still kicking around that always have to be placed in position 1 or 10 due to their cell size. I guess one problem with my technique is that I've always just inserted a starter strip into the middle of the broodnest in a colony on conventional foundation. Further, it was probably done at a time when the colony was really looking for drones. Despite my poor implementations, I still gotta believe that the comb resulting from starter strips only is going to be less "mobile" than that drawn from foundation.

[Troy]

I too am intrigued by these starter strips and wired frames. I made up a whole bunch of them and have started getting the bees to draw them out and I'm frustrated with what I'm seeing.

Most of the frames are about half drone comb and that is just too much. I would rather have one frame of fully drawn drone comb so I can remove and put in freezer and then have the other 9 brood frames with worker foundation in them.

Are there some techniques people are using to get the bees to draw this out better?

I know I read that bees draw wax best during the main flow and several hives had these on all the way through the Orange Blossom Flow, but that is pretty well done now.

Pretty soon it will get blast furnace hot here in Florida and we have several mini nectar flows, but nothing big and long like th orange blossom, so things kind of slow down during the summer months.

Is it best to do this early in the season, fall, winter (not that we really have one in Orlando), or what?

Could we persuade MB to write more details on the techniques of getting the bees to draw this out on his web page?

Hint Hint......

[Michael Bush]

>Are there some techniques people are using to get the bees to draw this out better?

Leave the drone comb. When they get enough they start drawing all worker comb. If you keep taking the drone comb out, they will keep drawing drone comb.