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How to change to 4.9mm foundation

3K views 6 replies 5 participants last post by  Michael Bush 
#1 ·
Hello all.

I have a few questions about 4.9 mm cell size.

1- Can you switch over a 2 story hive to 4.9mm?

2- How do you switch an establish hive over to 4.9mm?

3- Do they cell plastic foundation that is 4.9 mm?

I am thinking about switching over but I have no clue HOW to switch over.
 
#3 ·
>1- Can you switch over a 2 story hive to 4.9mm?

You can switch any hive over.

>2- How do you switch an establish hive over to 4.9mm?

The two common methods are:

Method 1: First remove ANY empty or mostly empty large cell frames from all of the brood chamber. Feed frames of small cell foundation into the hive removing empty large cell frames and either moving large cell frames of honey above an excluder or taking them out of the hive. Repeat until all the comb has been replaced with small cell (this will take some time, probably more than a year) I usually try to keep moving the large cell to the outside edges until it emerges or is filled with honey. A variation on this could be small cell starter strips or foundationless frames or, when there is a drawn comb on each side, just an empty frame.

Method 2: Do a complete shake down. That means you put boxes of frames with small cell foundation on the old bottom board and shake all the bees in the hive into that and put the old frames in a different hive to let the brood emerge etc.


>3- Do they cell plastic foundation that is 4.9mm?

Dadant does. I like it after the bees are regressed. I have not heard of anyone having really good luck with it on unregressed bees. Once you have a lot of bees that have been raised on smaller cells they will usually draw it fine.

Do a search on small cell and you'll find many discussions on this.
 
#7 ·
>how do you get them to regress?

If you give them small cell wax or room to build their own comb they will regress. It will probably be about 5.1mm cell size. You may need to give them another change over of comb after they have raised bees on that size comb.

>My bees were all on pierco plastic foundation. I used the method #1 mentioned above, but by using the plastic 4.9mm foundation. I had very little problems.

I would expect that since the Pierco is already 5.2mm or so. I haven't had any luck with the plastic when the bees were on 5.4mm.
 
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