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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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#31 ·
Sergey, I think you can only have two hives based on something you said in the thread, but you could pull some brood to do a split and give the brood to another beek? I would say give it to me (I thoughtful that way!), but I don't think it would survive the trip across the country.

I guess that is the bad thing about having a never ending summer, the brood cycle just keeps going and going.
 
#32 ·
If you have a 5 story broodnest sooner or later the bees will do their own split, AND take half the honey with them, if you do not shorten that stack. There are California beekeepers on here somewhere. OD Frank is one of them, Charlie B is a pretty smart beek too.

(3 of my hives swarmed in the last month, making a new queen, taking some bees and stores with them.)

My images are too large for beesource, so all of my pretty foundationless comb will remain a mystery. I know it is hard to crush and strain beautiful comb, which might be why they made extractors, but I don't know if foundationless can be extracted.

Gypsi
 
#33 ·
Shannon
Yes, I am permitted to have only two beehives by the City of Santa Monica. We are lucky - Los Angeles is not permitting bees! This is really great stock (bees). They swarmed beautifully in the end of July after I collected honey. Now I have brand new very enthusiastic queen. The swarm is a powerful colony in my neighbor backyard. Since, I am "natural" in many ways, I have no problem if bees do swarm (as long as it does not affect my neighbors). After swarming I decided to give them some break - result of this is 5 mediums nest... Now, I think, it is kind of too late to do a split... I wish you could have some of my bees, they are great! In the future I am sure I will make a splits to keep these local bees. Sergey
 
#34 ·
Gypsi
Many thanks for visiting this thread. I am also concern about the scale of the hive. See my comments above. As for pictures - it does not work this way. Forum Actions/General Settings at the bottom of the page set "Basic editor". In "Go Advance" click "Manage attachments". In the separate window choose a single file and click "upload". Close download window and when done with text, "Submit Reply". This way the program automatically shrinks the image to acceptable size and post a thumbnails of the picture with link to the bigger picture. Barry, the Moderator, told me that it should not work, but so far it works. You could "upload' many pictures and then post them by clicking "Submit Reply". It took to me a while to figure it out - try, It would be nice to see your foundationless honeycomb! Sergey
 
#36 ·
...are your bees redrawing your harvested frames this time of year?
Yes, I meant, my management is different. Instead taking the whole super, I normally take every other frame in the box closest to the nest and replace with empty "frame" (top bar) - sort of checkerboarding... Top box is always full of honey (for bees). Normally,within the month or so, bees make a new comb and filled up with the honey. Sometime it takes longer. When box is 70% full, I remove frames with honey again (older one, from previous cycle) again. This way, bees are making new comb all the time. It is sort of swarming prevention. Periodically, they are slow down and take a break, than start again. It seems to me, they have short "winter" periods every 2-3 months. In mid July they swarmed. In mid September I got 5 frames full of honey and extracted approximately 7.5 kilos of honey. In July I got another 6 kilos. Right now, there are 5 beautiful 50-90% completed combs with nectar in the upper box. I did not take pictures since girls were not in right mood...
 
#37 ·
Sergey, we'll see if you can look at these. I don't have time to shrink photos to beesource standard, and the one with my queen is a 2 MB file I might print a tshirt off of






 
#39 ·
Nice pics Gypsi and Sergey. Sergey, are the double deckers from frames that border the new frames you put in? I'm having that issue as well. The bees draw out the new frames ok, but they like extending the current frames into them at the same time, and I know how you feel, mine are deeps and I can barely lift them out with two hands and I have to pinch them so hard it hurts my fingers to hang onto them.
 
#41 ·
... Sergey, are the double deckers from frames that border the new frames you put in?
Yes, they basically make exactly twice thicker honeycomb - instead two frames, they use one occupying the space of two. But, I do not care - crush-and-strain, you know... Interestingly, I do not see a difference when honey comb made in different foundationless "frames" (just empty frame, without bottom bar, without bottom and side bars, different starters) - the manipulation of the top bar "frame" with full honeycomb is not more difficult than if it is a foundationless complete frame. But, all my frames are medium in this hive. Many thanks for nice comment. Sergey
 
#40 ·
a really good frame tool is a must. And I mix foundationless between plasticell. My bees draw out dadan'ts wax coated plasticell just fine. They prefer the foundationless. But I prefer separated frames so we all get a little of what we want.



(and this is September comb being drawn, for all those that say bees will not draw comb in the fall. If they need comb, and they are fed or have flow, they will draw comb.)
 
#48 ·
Bees dictates what to do. I have two beehives. One is 6 mediums tall and growing... another just happened to be experimental. First, I was trying to convert them into Kenyan horizontal beehive. For this I build adapter from Lang to KTBH. They refuse to expand into KTBH, become crowded in Langs part and heavily swarmed (beautiful swarm). I would call it "absconded". The rest suffered trying to establish a new queen... Finally, after 2 month of non-existence, they established a new queen and start growing (within initial Lang deep). I offered to them additional box - they ignored it! They are in complete denial to expand vertically! So, I spend the whole weekend making for them a horizontal hive - basically the box of the size of two Langs deeps putting together. Sort of compromise between Lang and TBH. So, today we had moved into nice two-bedroom apartment. I had chance to take a few pictures. Note that all frames are foundationless. I also did not find any single cross-comb or other comb imperfection.
 

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#49 ·
hey Sergey great pics almost makes me want to move to California for the year round forage. When the bees place wax over a cell they are capping it, thus you have a capped frame of honey. Couple of your posts referred to cupped cells and it took me awhile since you were consistant in referring to them this way thought it was something new...
Great job long live the queen!
 
#50 ·
Danmcm
Many thanks for your comments. It is quite confusing here in California without seasons. Especially to me, from Russia. It is so interesting - large vertical hive is all about making more honey. The horizontal one (see story above) is full of brood and not much honey - just some around the brood and may be one full frame of honey... I hope they have enough to eat and feed babies. Two hives - two totally different personalities!
....Couple of your posts referred to cupped cells ....
sorry for this - it is my broken English!
Good luck with your bees!
 
#51 · (Edited)
I removed very old frames from my beehive. These frames used to have a brood. They are foundationless and stayed in the hive for at least 3 years (to my knowledge) - cells are 5.0-5.1 mm. I feel that dark comb is too "dark" and add a few pictures of my beehives place. The animal- is a "wild" cat, gift from Switzerland - was intensively searched on both borders. Persimmons are so bright and optimistic!
 

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#52 ·
I did inspection of my horizontal double-Lang hive (see picture above). It looks like, girls are doing very well. They made a few beautiful bars of honey - I was not able to take a picture because the comb is so huge, I was afraid it could break. In the future, I probably need to replace bars on some sort of frame for security. There are bunch of brood. I took only one picture.
 

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#55 · (Edited)
Since my girls are very active these days (SoCal), I decided to check with them to see if they have enough space in their 5-story apartment building. Apparently, from the last inspection 3-4 weeks ago, they managed to fill up 2 mediums. I steal one frame with beautiful honey to give them a little more space. Only 2 frames are completely empty. Most of the frames are at least 70% drawn comb with mostly uncapped honey. As usual, I am posting some pictures of my foundationless frames. This time I had an experiment - 2 month ago, I gave girls an empty box with top bars only - it is nearly full now. All comb is straight and there is very little cross-comb. Middle picture shows the top bar with honey comb in the Lang. I find that older combs (started earlier and completed now) sometime attached to the bottom - I have to be careful with this. I also made a holder for the frames to hold them outside the hive - it is massive, but works well for now. Girls behaved well this time. Next time it would be a winter harvest. Thanks for visiting this page. Good luck with your bees! Sergey
 

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#58 · (Edited)
Some fresh honeycomb from the vertical beehive (see above), 11-20-2012. Note that this is just "top bar". The honeycomb were stored in the container before taking a picture, thus - some damage to the beautiful honeycomb (on the left). I apologize for that.

I measured also the cell size - it is 6.4 mm, huge! It looks like, when they start honeycomb from foundationless, they always made a huge cells, but it is not drone's cells - it is for honey. It is my understanding that when comb is completed, they remodel it to accommodate the brood. I never was able to catch this moment... my brood cells are 5-5.1 mm. It is just mystery to me how they "shrink" the cells.
Sergey
 

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#61 ·
Very nice Sergey! I would like to get into my hives but it is too cold in Houston right now. I have a NUC/rescued hive I hope makes it through the winter. They have been taking about 1 pint a week in 1:1 with HBH and active foraging, but have abandoned most of the comb from the rescue that I put in foundationless frames with rubber bands.
Have a wonderful holiday season!
 
#63 ·
My horizontal TB-Lang hybrid hive is blooming. Today weather permitted to do a quick inspection. The box is full of bees. They needed to be split but I am not sure what is the situation with drones. Girls made a beautiful comb and filled it with nectar and brood. To my surprise, bees were not aggressive at all. Sorry for the quality of the pictures - I damaged honey comb during the inspection and we had quite a mess, bees and hone everywhere... normal life. I also collected 7 frames of honey. Sergey
 

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#64 ·
Very Nice Sergey! The last 3 weeks I have been doing my garden set up, but the girls have been all over the Borage I planted, about 3 plants currently blooming. I really want to do some hive inspections but my garden work has to be done in between the rains here. The Sat. the girls were out in force, 71F, and coming back with their legs looking like cheerleader pom poms! My 3 main hives look very healthy from the front porch activity, but am still concerned over the recovered/rescued hive (still small), but there is still activity there. Hopefully in the next two weeks I can do a hive inspection and capture some video/pictures. However I may wait until my order from Country Rubes arrives, now waiting on Income Tax Return (already filed). I am adding two 10 frame med. only hives to see how that goes. I pick up my package bees from BeeWeaver on 6 April and I am really looking forward to this as it will be my first package install. I am doing two at my place and one more for a friend in a TBH I built for them.
Best of luck this season my friend!
 
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