Foundationless

[whalers]

This season I am going to remove the foundation from my frames and convert them to topbar. I will be adding a popsicle stick on the underside of the top bar to create a guide. In all my research I cannot find how far the popsicle stick should extend beyond the topbar. Would like to hear what toher folks think. Is a quarter inch enough or should it be more?

[Charlie B]

I do 1/2" inch down from the top to reinforce the comb so it's strong enough for the extractor. It really gives them something to grab onto. I would recommend that even for your TBH. I cut strips of cedar but you could use paint stir sticks. They're free at Home Depot.

[whalers]

Charlie thank you. Sounds like the perfect deal. One more question. Have you used deep frames when going without foundation? I've seen some on the bee supply sites and they have a wire that runs across them in the middle to help support the come I guess. I want to switch to medium supers and frames but cant do it all at once. Will the deeps work without foundation or am I wasting my time?

[Charlie B]

I went with all mediums so I could go foundationless. There is just too much weight at work with a deep to secure the foundation when inspecting and extracting. I didn't want to mess around with the wire stuff so I could run deeps. (Seems to old school for me). I'm in the process of cutting down all my ten frame mediums to eights as well, (winter project) because of the weight.

I just extracted 17 pounds of Euc honey from 6 foundationless medium frames and the comb didn't budge in the extractor contrary to popular belief. Those 1/2" starter strips really give the comb support.

[whalers]

Thank you. Guess I'm going to have some equipment to sell, but moving to all mediums sounds good to me.

[Michael Bush]

I suppose "top bar hive" has always been a misnomer, but it is the accepted term. It should be "top bar only hive". What you will have will be a "foundationless" hive as you will have a frame.

1/4" is minimal but should work. I would never go under that.

[Intheswamp]

1/4" is minimal but should work. I would never go under that.

Does this mean that the often recommended sideways turned wedge makes a minimal guide strip whereas craft/popsicle sticks or paint stirrers make better guides? Even though the wedges are on hand, the costs of craft sticks and stirrers are little. If the end product (the frame/comb combination) will be a stronger and better product by using them, then it seems using the craft sticks or stirrers would be a good bit better than using the wedges. ???

[Michael Bush]

>Does this mean that the often recommended sideways turned wedge makes a minimal guide strip whereas craft/popsicle sticks or paint stirrers make better guides?

The sideways wedge is probably close to 1/4" on one side (I don't have one handy to measure) and a strong 3/8" at least on the other. They do fine. I do like the symmetry better with the pain stirrers or popscicle sticks, but the bees don't seem to care that much...

> Even though the wedges are on hand, the costs of craft sticks and stirrers are little. If the end product (the frame/comb combination) will be a stronger and better product by using them, then it seems using the craft sticks or stirrers would be a good bit better than using the wedges. ???

I think it's pretty much a wash.

[Delta Bay]

I've used wood strips that were 3/8" in depth an had poor results. I'm not sure the reason for this other than it appeared that the bees view that depth as a barrier and build the combs either diagonally on the bar or offset to one side of the strip. This was when installing swarms or packages in comb less hives. The hives are still workable but not how I like to see a hive start out. When the guides are kept at a depth between 3/16" to 1/4" that problem has not been an issue for me.
If you are feeding empty frames or bars between already straight combs it doesn't seem to matter what you use.

[Michael Bush]

If you want to convert existing drawn frames with wax foundation to foundationless, just cut all but one row of cells around the edges out. They will draw natural comb in the center.