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Any Honey-Super-Cell reviews yet?

31K views 98 replies 35 participants last post by  Michael Bush 
#1 ·
Anybody that has bought the new fully drawn frames from H-S-Cell got any opinions on the new frames? Been waiting for some comments before I shelled out some money. :confused:
 
#79 ·
Spring inspection

Weather has broken and the trees are starting to bloom.

I was getting some hives ready to move out to the farm this evening, the smaller ones first as I will be splitting the larger ones before I move them.

I was impressed that I was able to overwinter small colonies on a single deeps of HSC. I had three singles that had four to six frames of bees and stores, the remaining frames were empty. They each had at least two frames of wall to wall brood! In one of the hives I had one frame of foundationless that was next to brood and they were completely ignoring the natural comb. :confused:

I also had some larger colonies that had moved up and out of the HSC, but it was very evident that they had used it for brooding. I will save it for swarms and install a new box of HSC under that hive with an excluder above so to force the queen down making the heart of the nest HSC again.

I am really liking what I am seeing.

Of note is that the hives I forgot to install the bottom tray under the SBB are smaller in numbers and are not taking off as fast as the ones that were closed up, but those were not large hives, these were the swarms from last summer.
 
#80 ·
HSC experimenting: regression, brood hatch times

Anyone used these for regression? If so how long before you started inserting undrawn frames alongside the HSC? results?

Anyone done any experiments to check emergence times on HSC or had long enough to make any speculations on it's effectiveness on mite loads?

Thanks.
 
#85 ·
I cut 40 frames of it down last fall and made 90 mediums
since I was bored in the winter and wanted to get some of it into a hive I took 2 boxes of it and laid the frames on their side and poured sugar and some water in them
after it dried I put them on a hive that was light so it would have enough stores
the bottom of those boxes has quite a bit of brood in it now
I also started 2 nucs on it on 3-31-07
they consisted of 1 drawn wax comb and 4 new HSC combs
they both have brood in the wax comb and I'll let you know what a full inspection looks like in another 10 days or so
our main flow should start about then

Dave
 
#88 ·
So. It's been almost a year and a half since people started using this stuff and talking about it here. whats the verdict? I've read the entire thread and so for the results have been mixed.

no one has posted anything in quite a while so now I'm wondering if there is a reason for the silance.
 
#89 ·
It's been a really mixed up year for me. I was ready to pull all my empty supers off in July and start feeding when I started getting a little flow. Now I have only pulled half of my supers and started feeding the hives without supers, it's been a fair summer and fall flow. I haven't been in too many of the hives to take a good look but I can tell you that I have seen mixed results.

My plan for this year was to split and make 50 new HSC hives. Didn't happen. :( With the late freeze and no spring flow, my bees just didn't have what it took to take off and make splits. I was able to get about thirty of the HSC deeps into service though, some in swarms and cutouts, and a few on small over wintered hives needing more space.

My bees have two choices, HSC or PC. It seems that a lot of them prefer the PC but when it is full they use the HSC, and when consolidating will leave the HSC first. Others hives seem to not care and will use the HSC as quickly as the PC.

For the most part this was a year of getting the HSC used for the first time. What is common in both the PC and HSC is that once it is used by the bees, "broke in" if you will, it is accepted just like if it were their own wax.

Bottom line, It Depends. I will say that some bees like it, most tolerate it, and a few really just don't want to touch it.
 
#90 ·
For the most part this was a year of getting the HSC used for the first time. What is common in both the PC and HSC is that once it is used by the bees, "broke in" if you will, it is accepted just like if it were their own wax.

Bottom line, It Depends. I will say that some bees like it, most tolerate it, and a few really just don't want to touch it.
I'll second this as well. It took forever to get the queen to lay in the HSC. If they put nectar or pollen in it first the queen would then use it. When I took the HSC hive to the mountains it had twelve frames of solid brood. Now the top box is capped honey and the bees don't seem to care that it's plastic at all. I expect the HSC hive to do really well next year when they can expand the broodnest at will.
 
#95 ·
regression using HSC

I put 5 packages on HSC. Four out of the Five did well about normal. I locked them in for 3 days with a feeder before letting them fly - by then they had become accustomed to the plastic and settled in. After 8 weeks I added a second deep during a flow using Dadant 4.9mm wax foundation. Those that drew the second deep out did a fairly good job. They do prefer wax, moving right up from the HSC into the wax.

One of the packages was my best performing hive this year.

First year mite counts don't mean anything to me so I haven't bothered to count, next year will be the true test.
 
#97 ·
I put one package on these April 1, with 6 in the middle and 2 frames of standard undrawn foundation on either side (actually one of those was drawn out). Following advice gleaned from here, I sprayed each side of the HSC with sugar syrup, and shut the bees in (with feeder) for three days.

It was actually kind of a mix up that I got these, I thought I was ordering the small cell foundation. In any event, so far so good. The Queen definitely started out laying mostly in the one drawn out standard cell, but by last Sunday (two weeks in) there was a fairly big area of brood in the HSC.

Only time will tell on the mite counts.
 
#99 ·
There have been some more recent posts. My most recent experience is with the ones that came from China. The new ones are coming from the US but the quality seems have slipped by all accounts on here. Fuzzy edges instead of crisp ones. Seems you have to sand off those fuzzy edges to get them to use it. My experience with the Chinese version was that it sets them back two weeks getting them to accept it and after that it works just like any drawn comb.
 
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