Experiment 2012/13 - Acquiring drawn comb

[Roland]

Reply to Wcubed quote about drawing foundation in a deep:

But I still don't know whether the one that did started before "main flow" or not.

Answer: to the best of my recollections, they where given an empty brood chamber of foundation one brood cycle before our honey flow was SUPPOSED to start. The only explanation I have is that one of the queens left more pheromone behind, and encouraged cell drawn than the other. When we sub in 4-5 frames interleafed, and they are in expansion mode, we often see eggs laid on the bare foundation, with the cells walls drawn as the egg/larvae grows.

Crazy Roland

[wcubed]

Roland,
Thank you sir. We (you or I) don't need to have an explanation for the why. But it helps to know the what.
Walt

[MattDavey]

Walt, surely those photos have been doctored?

Roland, when you've alternated frames of foundation in the brood nest, knowing that you put capped brood frames above a queen excluder, have you also alternated frames of foundation with the remaining 5-6 frames above the excluder?

If so, is this essentially Checkerboarding the brood nest with foundation?

Have you done this regularly, or do you usually use drawn comb instead?

Would you recommend this to someone who doesn't have drawn comb and the brood nest is clearly being backfilled?

Thanks guys!

Matthew Davey

[wcubed]

UPDATE ON THE EXPERIMENT
Refresher on the fall activities: Two colonies were combined in mid Sept. One, a package hived on all shallow supers and a second package hived in a shallow over a deep. Both were started in late spring on standard foundation and were fed through the remaining season to keep them barely growing. At combining time, the all-shallow hive had 1 1/2 supers of brood and 3 1/2 supers of honey laced with feed. When extracted, it tasted like our normal honey, so it was mostly processed field nectar. Set aside to be used as feed.

The unit housed in the deep and shallow had a full deep of brood and a few frames of honey in the shallow overhead, with the remainder still undrawn foundation. When combined, the hive was, from the bottom, a deep of brood, a shallow of brood, a shallow of mixed brood and foundation, and 3 full shallows of capped honey. The 3 filled supers were removed later for extraction on a freezing morning to avoid taking bees - below in the tight cluster. Leaving the stack like that until Nov. was the first of several mistakes on my part.

We have reported several places in our writings that colony instincts direct adjusting population to be propotional to cavity size and stores available in the fall. To do otherwise could be fatal. Too many bees could result in over-consumption and starvation. Too few bees and natural winter attrition could lead to poor wintering, slow buildup, and/or failure to reproduce in the spring by swarming. Most colonies get it right and have a winter cluster sized for the cavity volume and stores. But you knew that?

We mentioned in the fall (earlier posts) that the combine had too many bees for the anticipated wintering configuration of a deep and 2 shallows. But we didn't want to push them into an overcrowding swarm in the fall and left the extra honey in place. Better too many bees than too few. We could feed in late winter, if necessary. Not mentioned in the fall posts was the presence of a deep of brood in early November. Not good. Normally, the broodnest is backfilled by that time and full-time clustering starts in early Nov. but not this season. The colony was foraging off and on into Dec (Christmas week). Also not reported in the fall posts was the adding of a medium of 1 to 1 syrup at the top in early Nov to assist in backfilling the broodnest at closeout. The medium of permacomb was dried in a week and removed. Second mistake:Two gallons was not nearly enough. Overwinter, they relocated the cluster off the empty deep and up into the first shallow of honey. Had they backfilled the deep, they would have wintered there.

(Big) Mistake #3: In early Feb. went in to checkerboard with 2 of the now empty supers of comb extracted in the winter. Finding the deep at the bottom basically empty, put the lower shallow of brood below the deep - wanted to put the deep back in service as the basic brood nest. (standard in my management scheme) The shallow at the top had a small arc of brood at the bottom of a couple frames. I expected to lose that small amount of brood to chilling by isolation from the cluster by the empty deep, but to get the deep back in use was worth it to me. What we didn't know was that we were headed into six weeks of poor foraging weather. When the temps supported breaking cluster it was either raining or threatening skies. Stopped colony developement in its tracks.

We have a firm commitment against any brood nest disturbance. The results of this exception, only make it firmer.

We are now waiting for the start of "main flow." It's 2 weeks late and counting. Will go into more detail on the spring season on the next post.

For now, we just want to report that between me and Mother Nature, we blew the experiment. We are going into main flow with a weakling for this time in the season, and we don't expect to come close to my usual honey production.

Walt

[Acebird]

Finding the deep at the bottom basically empty, put the lower shallow of brood below the deep - wanted to put the deep back in service as the basic brood nest. (standard in my management scheme) The shallow at the top had a small arc of brood at the bottom of a couple frames. I expected to lose that small amount of brood to chilling by isolation from the cluster by the empty deep, but to get the deep back in use was worth it to me.

It is your management scheme to be using deeps not the bees. If you don't look at what you did as mistakes and give up on the idea that they won't cross the bottom bars you could have just left them the way there were and they would have been fine. JMO

[jim lyon]

Walt: In hindsight can you really say that your decision to reverse your boxes was a "big mistake"? When I have some decision I made turn out to be the wrong one I try to look back and ask myself if given the facts as I knew them at the time, was my decision really a bad one. Unless you chose to ignore a weather forecast promising you 2 weeks of unseasonably poor buildup weather I might suggest that given the same set of facts and with your knowledge of the buildup history of your area that you would go with the odds and do the same thing again......or maybe not.

[wcubed]

Ace,
Have never said they "Won't" cross the interbar space. Most do, some don't - under a wide variety of circumstances. Do you understand the word reluctant? Almost all hesitate - some more, some less. Bees are adaptable. They use what they have to work with - whether they like it or not.

jim,
Was aware of the risk. But at the time considered them possibly too strong for my supply of drawn comb. And yes I would do it again under the same circumstances. It was a mistake from the standpoint of objectives of the experiment - to get good production in the second year.

Walt

[minz]

Walt, I love your experiments, very detailed. I have also been running some regarding your CB technique as well as simply monitoring the amount of new drawn comb (critical for somebody expanding or just attempting to keep up).
First weather: breaking records for heat and end of winter. Blackberries are in bloom here, my logs put them a solid 4 weeks early. That is our last flow of the summer and summer has not yet arrived.
Swarm season was also about 4 weeks ahead and I put two in the trees (April 25th and April 27th) and captured them both. One drew 9 frames (I added a drawn to anchor them) in about a week. I was shocked. Second is just now getting to 10 frames in 4 weeks, (all on wax foundation)
Of my overwintered nucs, two have now filled a double deep and has started a shallow, and a third has just started a second deep (all on wax foundation).
The CB hive (no pollen box) did not swarm and although it had constant activity it did not build as expected. It may have superseded rather than swarmed. It has a medium drawn that it has not touched, still filling in the CB shallows.
I think it is obvious that the weather has played havoc on my experiments, but I wanted to document my records for drawing comb to this spring. I label every frame I build and document each box I put in the field in an excel spread sheet but this post is already too long.