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Foundationless and (some) frameless honey in Santa Monica, July 16, 2012

125K views 231 replies 30 participants last post by  cerezha 
#1 · (Edited)
I am in the process of switching to all foundationless in my two Lang hives permitted in Santa Monica, CA.

To me,the foundationless approach has many advantages:
(a) easy to build, no special care required (waxing, wiring, foundation installation etc);
(b) in combination with mediums - it is universal for all bee-hive related tasks (brood chamber, honey supers etc);
(c) freshly made wax, no "drawn comb" worries, no old comb issues;
(d) easy to extract honey especially at the small scale (hobbyist type), crush-and-strain, no special equipment required; shape of the comb is not important; there are byproducts of extraction - honey-vine and wax.
(e) bees choose proper (for them!) size for the comb cells; they maintain proper bee-space in accordance to their needs.

I am harvesting a few totally foundationless "frames" every few weeks. Note that there is only a top bar from the standard frame has been shown in one picture.

Disclaimer: Welcome to this thread. This post has no intention to discuss comparison between foundation and foundationless, frame or frameless approaches. It is for pictures of your foundationless/frameless achevements in Lang hive! Please, feel free to post pictures of your foundationless/frameless latest honey crop here. Sergey
 

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#155 ·
Re: Foundationless and frameless in Santa Monica, April 16, 2013

I have 6 immediate neighbors (weird property split by my wife's grandma). 2 have hives (plus us); one - empty lot (great bee potential); one never complained; another is curious and my bees love his Jacuzzi (plenty of water at my place), but he has horrible barking dogs, so I have something to complain if necessary also; last one - extremely noisy old couple, who complains about everything... Another day they discovered my hidden under cherry tree nuc. They immediately complained that they could not do weeds because my bees interfere. Actually, I have my ways with them - I show them fruits on the cherry-tree and explained that bees pollinate the tree. They immediately become exited. Than I very politely and carefully deliver to them the news, that they actually surrounded by beekeepers - 3 families have now bees! They were perplexed... old woman was upset - how she could complain about bees to me if she do not know if it is my bee? I delicately suggested that she could choose somebody else for complains... her response was hilarious: "How you do not understand that those neighbors are horrible and very rude - she could not complain to them, I am only a decent (?) person, who politely listen her complains." They got their honey but I think, I need to find a better place for my unofficial nuc (doing great!). Lady is old and really not well - if my bee stings her, they will accuse me in murder...

As for expansion - I am reluctant to do so because I have a lot of other stuff to do plus full-time job. I discovered that bee-hobby required much more attention than any other hobbies I ever had. To me, perhaps the ideal situation would be 3 officially permitted hives and 2 nucs - it is a lot of bees in small place! But it will add some flexibility.

Gas-meter guys are actually very nice - apparently, they have a special code for situation, when they have no access to the meter because of animal. Originally it was for dogs, but now they use it for bees also. They just put this code and come other day. No charges for this.
 
#158 ·
Re: Foundationless and frameless in Santa Monica, April 16, 2013

Hi Cerezha,
I corresponded a few weeks back. I have a 10 frame and 8 frame. I decided to experiment with frameless foundation in the 8 frame. I took my first deep and put foundationless frames on the ends and then right before I went on a week's vacation put another deep below it with all foundationless frames(using dowels for guides...no wires). I checked today and here is one of the end frames in the 1st box..beautiful!..the other end frame they were just starting..caught them festooning..very cute). I looked in the bottom box and they were just starting in the middle frame. It has been very warm here and the nectar flow is on. Here are some pics of the one frame. Bee Honeycomb Beehive Honeybee Insect
Bee Honeybee Beehive Insect Honeycomb
.
 
#159 ·
Re: Foundationless and frameless in Santa Monica, April 16, 2013

.. I checked today and here is one of the end frames in the 1st box..beautiful!..the other end frame they were just starting..caught them festooning..very cute). I looked in the bottom box and they were just starting in the middle frame. ...
Halley, great job! See, it works! Congratulation with first AND perfect foundationless frame!!!! It is absolutely beautiful! As a general precaution, I would add new foundationless frames one by one and place them between already drawn frames (foundation or not). This way bees understood your intentions better. Also, placing the whole foundationless box is a quite challenge, but your girls looks like handled it beautifully!
 
#160 ·
Re: Inspection May 10, 2013

Well, I had very nice beginning. My horizontal (sort of) hive is doing well. They decided do not expand vertically anymore - they are busy filling up the deep with nectar and honey. I took only two pictures this time, because I was preoccupied with this gigantic frames. Since last inspection, they build and filled up 3 or 4 new bars with additional support at the sides - you could see the glimpse of the side support in the picture. I removed second deep, because it was completely empty. Next inspection, I think, I may add a medium below the deep or just remove the deep if it is ready. Bees were very docile even when I removed these gigantic frames...

Another hive is entirely different story - I just need to add a super. But I need a few frames with drawn comb to put into empty foundationless box. The plan was to take a few drawn frames from the existing box and put them into new one... Well, I was stung through PM vented beesuit quite a few times (6?)!!! Pigeon Mountain - did you hear me? It is 1 season old suit. So, I was forced to conclude my mission quickly. Girls followed me and made impressive show to my wife, who watched from inside the house - sorry, no pictures. :( In the morning I watched the same hive from 2' distance standing literally next to the entrance. I guess, our backyard will be unavailable for a few days.
 

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#163 ·
Re: Inspection May 10, 2013

My wife took some pictures yesterday. The quality is not high, because the light wasn't so good, but I thought this was a pretty frame of new brood:



And this is a frame of older brood that the bees have made into pollen storage. I can't get over the richness of the colors. It's like some kind of beautiful old brocade. One of these days I'm going to send a better shot like this to my daughter the artist, and see what she makes of it:

 

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#165 · (Edited)
Re: Horizontal hive inspection May 27, 2013

Today, I was trying to remove vertical extension from my horizontal hive, remaining of my unsuccessful split, which is now mostly honey. It was experimental and 1.3x deep (Hx1.3). Previously I had a problem - honeycomb fell because of weight. Today, I discovered the same problem (slightly smaller). So,finally, I rescued 3 full bars and one collapsed. Since, at the end of operation everything was honey, I decided to finish this project later. Since honey everywhere, I had limited ability to take a pictures even girls were very cooperative. The bottom line is that I need to add sides to my bars if I want to use deep boxes. Sides are not necessary for mediums. By the way, 2 frames with honey have sides, which means I've installed them on May 10, now they are full of honey. Tonight I crushed honey comb and spent a few hours rescuing bees stuck in broken comb, still alive. Update: 3 frames = 6 kilos of beautiful raw honey.
 

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#166 ·
Re: Horizontal hive inspection May 27, 2013

I've been considering using a top bar type bar for swarm traps to with short sides to prevent comb attachments to the sides of the boxes. The width would be 1 inch. I was thinking about using 3 inch sides and then using them in mediums if a swarm is captured. The sides would be 1 3/8 inches to give the be space the way a standard lang bar would. Will the stubby sides prevent the bees from attaching comb to the sides of the boxes, or will I need to go longer side?
 
#167 ·
Re: Horizontal hive inspection May 27, 2013

Well,
It is a philosophical question - does not matter what we decide, bees may decide differently. In my experience, bees attach (if they wanted) even standard full frames. Thus, I decided to experiment with bars if standard frames sometime did not work as expected. In my case, I need sides for honey-comb stability. Deep-size comb full of honey is just too heavy. I tried 1x9" sides (no bottom) in deep box - bees still occasionally attach it to the walls even with bee-space, but it is much better to manipulate sided bars. My impression is that "old" bee-space did not work as expected - bees behave differently, size of the bee different, management different...
Thanks for visiting and good luck with your project - I think it should work!
 
#170 · (Edited)
Re: Horizontalhive fate June 11, 2013

The plan was to try to remove the vertical attachment (super ?) to the horizontal hive. It did not work as planned - first, my tool to cut wax between wall and comb broke and second ANOTHER honeycomb collapsed... :( So, I have a lot of honey, but it is difficult to get it. Meantime, girls are working hard in all directions. The bar with the brood was damaged by my tool. I hate this gigantic bars, could not wait to remove them. Interestingly, ~20% shorter (real deep size) in horizontal part of the hive are doing great - no problem at all!
 

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#173 ·
Re: Horizontalhive fate June 11-25, 2013

Just got back from a month in the North Country, and checked my horizontal boomer. That hive is capping a lot of honey-- I took my first frame of honey and got almost 2 quarts of honey from it. The bees made that frame way too fat, and there were so many other frames of honey that I couldn't resist.

Anyway, picture of the long hive open:



And a frame of foundationless almost completely capped honey:

 
#177 ·
Re: Horizontalhive fate June 11-25, 2013

Bees doing well. One apiary was suffering from pesticide spraying. Canola got sprayed with Thiacloprid. During full blossoming and sunshine. Thiacloprid was found in the pollen from those bees in laboratory tests. Bees recover right now. Hope not to loose all of them since they were weakened pretty much. First loosing all the flight bees on one day, then some brood but not much. One queen failed and was superseded. (Young queen from 2012, was pretty strong before.) Removed all pollen and bee bread, dumped the honey.

But in all other apiaries the bees do well.
 
#181 ·
Re: Small inspection, July 16, 2013

...This was the prettiest comb yet, I think.
Hey
How you train your bees to do such perfect comb? Mine are on the "rustic" side, functional but not perfect :) and I even do not want to think what is happened right now in my Lang - I guess, they had a few free moments for creativity: one comb has been split in three festoons. Festoons nicely attached to the bottom of the box and side frames (bars) like a flower ... :( I would need to remove the entire super.
 
#182 ·
Re: Small inspection, July 16, 2013

Sergey,
I seriously owe you some pictures! I did my first harvest on 5 July and I need to edit the video. I did crush and strain, but got 65 lbs. of fantastic honey, kind of spicy citrus overtones from 2 hives. I sold a bunch of my hunting gear, got off the lease, and have a Maxant 3100P on order, maybe 3-4 more weeks for delivery.... My 3 new hives, Buckfest started 6 Apr., are outstanding producers. They have filled 3 med. supers as their brood chambers, and each has a filled honey super (all foundationless). I added a second super to hive 6 two weeks ago and will add one to hives 4 & 5 this weekend. However we have started our summer derth about 2 weeks ago so do not expect any more until mid Sept. with last harvest mid Nov. Our first freeze is early Dec.
 
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