Drawing combs from the bottom up

[Michael Bush]

Just checked on one of my hives on foundationless frames. I just threw a box of empty foundationless frames on top on Saturday. Checked them today and the bees are buidling combs from the bottom bar up. And not very straight, I might add. I've never had them do this with foundationless frames or with starter strips before. Has anyone seen this before?

I pulled the frames and put two frames of brood in the box to bait the bees up to hang on the top bars and replaced them with new foundationless frames. I'll scrape down the messed up ones later and put them back in. Luckily there wasn't any brood in it and not much honey.

[Ian]

must be french bees,... doing everything backwards...

Never seen it myself

Ian

[Ross]

I had this happen in two of mine with starter strips. The kicker is, these were the only two where I tried 9 frames instead of 10. I don't know if it had anything to do with it or not. I scraped them down and told them to try again.

[BILLY BOB]

I have never used foundationless frames, but I have seen bees build comb from the bottom up when there is a good flow going and they run out of foundation, and they have room above. Almost like they don't want to leave the main hive to go up and start new comb.

Do you think if you put the foundationless frames under the establisted frames they may draw it better? (bottom supering)

BB

[Michael Bush]

Maybe they would draw it better below. I don't know. I just baited it up with a couple of drawn combs.

I have one hive with just top bars and only one bar has a starter strip and the rest are just flat 3/8" x 1 3/8" boards. Started them in a 5 frame nuc and then moved to a 10 frame box. They have drawn every comb perfectly down the middle of the bars.

I just opened one where I didn't get the frames together well (propolis on the end bars) and they ignored the starter strips and built it over a bit from the middle.

Silly bees or maybe silly human.

[BILLY BOB]

Michael if your bees are like mine then they are placing all the blame on you. My girls want to do it their way and think I'm the demanding slave driver who wants everything perfect.

BB

[Scot Mc Pherson]

If you look at Joe Waggle's feral hive picture, you should note that the hive was built from the bottom up, or at least the honey stores were. If it were built from the top down then almost all of the comb would have been black.