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How long to draw out foundation

3K views 5 replies 6 participants last post by  Goldprospector 
#1 ·
My wife and I are new beekeepers and received two 4-frame nucleus colonies on May 15. We hived each colony in deep boxes and filled out each brood box with 6 frames with wired foundation. It's now been a month and we're a bit surprised at how long it's taking the bees to draw the foundation out to comb. During our hive inspection today it appears each hive has barely drawn out about 2 frames of foundation.

Is this typical? At the rate the girls are working it'll be the end of summer before each hive has drawn out the two deep brood boxes (we plan to add a second brood box after 8 of 10 frames are fully drawn).

We've been feeding them 1:1 syrup throughout and they've been taking about a pint a day on average. Granted, the last week was pretty cold and wet, but we were really expecting to see more drawn comb during our hive inspection today.
 
#2 · (Edited)
I started with 4 frame nucs also last year. This year I got five frame nucs from a different supplier. I am amazed at the difference in the number of bees. Last year I got barely 3 frames of bees/brood. This year all five frames had bees boiling over the tops of the frames. I believe that I easily got twice as many bees this year. I struggled all year getting comb drawn out. I suspect that it was because of the low number of bees. Perhaps that is the case with your bees also.
 
#3 ·
I hived a package on May 12 in eight-frame mediums (release the queen the 18th) - I went in yesterday expecting them to have started into the second medium I left them two weeks ago as they had 6.5 combs fully drawn and the other one started. The comb building has really slowed down, but there's now tons of capped brood over three frames and the queen was on a frame that she seemed to be busy with.

I was also worried because it's been cold and wet in upstate NY for much of the last two weeks - and they didn't have much feed (since they had stopped taking it). That said, it warmed up today when I was there and they were flying and leaving the fresh feed alone.

I read something here that makes sense - at four weeks, many of the original bees are dying, but the new bees haven't emerged. I'm hoping when I get down there in another two weeks they'll be in good shape and building again. I am using a combination of wired wax foundation and foundationless with a guide - so far they've been building what looks like beautiful comb (to me).
 
#5 ·
I hive some nucs second week in May and they seemed to build very slowly. The weather was cold and I had vents in inner covers and large entrance openings. I fed but they filled the brood nest, so quit feeding. The queen was laying as soon as foundation was even partially drawn. On a hunch that it was mostly too cold in the hive to build wax and keep all the brood warm, I closed off all ventilation and down to minimum entrances. They seem to speed up drawing foundation and when weather warmed up a week ago, really went to town. I put another box of foundation on top this past weekend.

Some of the same batch of nucs hived about 300 miles southeast of here were ready for another box two weeks ago.
 
#6 ·
I Have Five hives started this year...All from packages except one was started as a split. Some have been prolific wax builders and others have not. I decided to checkerboard all frames that were not drawn out. The least amount was four frames in the second deep was not drawn out...the most was eight frames drawn out in the bottom and I wanted to add a new HB.

Anyway, almost 2 weeks ago I checkerboarded every hive and they all went into comb building mode. They are drawing out the frames between the brood like mad.

So IMO, you might want to consider checkerboarding if you have enough bees to keep the brood warm when you split them up.
 
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