One hive did not like foundationless

[Goldprospector]

One hive in particular built 12 to 14 frames of drone comb. I put in empties between nicely drawn out brood comb and everything they drew out naturally was drone comb...they superceded her...now I am gonna split the hive to get rid of some of that comb. I will leave some of it in for stores, but most I will just freeze and keep it for stores on newly started hives.

[wadehump]

They will build what they need not what you think they need to draw

[Goldprospector]

I agree, but it sure would have been nice if they would have superceded the queen before building all of that stuff. I am looking for natural small cells, but they can't lay small bees in drone comb.LOL

[Aerindel]

Interesting.

The very first thing my packages did when I installed them is make an almost full frame of drone comb, I was a little worried I'll admit, but it turns out that was the only drone comb they have made so far. After that one frame they went and drew everything else as worker comb and now that first frame is 90% filled with honey instead of drones.

[jadell]

Goldprospector,
Did you pull the drone comb out as they built it, or leave it in the hive?

[Michael Bush]

It is difficult to imagine a hive building 14 frames of drone comb. Is this in 7 boxes of frames? 25% is usually the upper limit.

[Goldprospector]

It is difficult to imagine a hive building 14 frames of drone comb. Is this in 7 boxes of frames? 25% is usually the upper limit.

This was in to 10 frame deep langs. I split the hive lately, removed the drone comb let them raise one queen from supercedure and bought another. Seems like they are building small cell now.