[Beekeeper23]

Has anyone attempted to figure out how many bits of wax it takes to cover a medium frame? This must be one heck of a problem to solve.

 

[Rader Sidetrack]

I image the hardest part is determining the weight of "a bit" of wax. Once you know that, just divide the weight of the wax in an empty medium frame by the weight of "a bit" to find out how many bits it takes.

 

[Beekeeper23]

I thought the same!

 

[Michael Bush]

>Has anyone attempted to figure out how many bits of wax it takes to cover a medium frame?

Do you mean wax scales? They vary in size and thickness so a scale is not exactly a fixed amount. You could reproduce Huber's experiments on comb building and just count scales to build some measurable portion and then figure out the appropriate multiplier... those experiments would be in Volume II. Here's a link to volume one and you can find the book which has volume two on that page.

http://www.bushfarms.com/huber.htm

 

[Beekeeper23]

Michael Bush, Thank you!!

 

[Michael Bush]

I suppose another method would be to assume (always dangerous, but sometimes necessary for a SWAG) that bees don't add much weight to the scales when they build wax (although they obviously change it with some salivatory addition which MIGHT add some weight) and weigh a number of scales (say 20 or something like that to average out differences in weight) then weigh a clean empty drawn comb and calculate how many scales that is. That would not take into account cappings, of course, But if you uncapped one frame the same as you usually do (or some number to average the results) and washed and dried the cappings and weighed them, you could add that to the calculations. Of course honey comb varies in thickness and that will change the results...

 

[Santa Caras]

Why would you wanna know how many scales it takes to fill a frame? Just courious, I'm sure theres a good reason but I was just wondering.