Foundationless Frames/Drone Cell Heaven

Last year was my first year going totally foundationless. My reasons for the change was the apparent hesitance of the bees to draw on plastic foundation the two years prior. I was surprised how much drone comb was created in the spring too. But a month later everything went back to what I expected. In fact, all of the hives I had last year just took off and it was much better than I remembered from using plastic foundation. My point of view on this is as follows: The bees know what to do and they have been doing it far longer than humans have existed. In spring, queens need to mate and every hive works towards that goal by making plenty of potential mates for them (if possible). After the drones are hatched, the hive will go back to making workers. I believe my job as a beekeeper is to be a good manager. Give the bees what they need to thrive and they will reward me with good queens and plenty of honey. They need to create a lot of drones in the spring, who am I to deny them their genetic requirements and instincts?

My season here is too short to wait for later in the summer. There sure is no difficulty in getting entire frames of drone drawn but foundationless worker cell frames are a high percentage of drone cells even when placed in the brood center in colonies with 2 entire frames of drone brood. When drone cells project out they get into the space of the neighbor frame and often the bees draw short cells there and fill only with pollen. Makes pulling frames difficult and all the irregular comb surface makes difficulty checking for queen cells or even finding the queen. Maybe warmer climate gives the bees different ways of spring buildup.

Here I find the brood nest with often irregular boundaries and the advice to draw new worker comb between two smoothly capped frames is a hard place to find! I did come across an interesting idea to get comb drawn in or around the edge of the brood nest without creating a barrier that could isolate parts of it. Irregular comb greatly reduces the ease of swapping frames around within a hive or hive to hive. I will try later in the season to see if the bees will draw out reasonably uniform foundationless worker comb.

From Dave Cushmans site http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/applecorer.html I have tried this trck and the holes get patched perfectly to worker pattern and the bees go at it quicker than an unaltered sheet of waxed foundation. That trick is a keeper.

>"My point of view on this is as follows: The bees know what to do and they have been doing it far longer than humans have existed."

If the ranches supplying Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken followed what chickens and cows did before humans existed, neither of them would exist. Modern agriculture has little to do with the way it was before humans existed. Our over population exists because humans invented modern agriculture.

All worker foundation is the core of modern apiculture that makes modern beehives highly productive. An unnaturally high population of workers VS a low population of drones is is the core of modern apiculture that makes modern beehives highly productive.

This year I had two big swarms swarm again five weeks after they first swarmed. Both were Warre hives with huge drone populations and no all worker foundation. Natural comb beekeeping is a different animal from foundation comb beekeeping.
If low and high production is not an issue with you foundationless is fine. If you want to make a lot of honey or worker bees for queen rearing or package bees sales, you should use foundation.