Disaster Strikes (melodramatic eh)

Beekeeping - Basics
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Disaster on many fronts.
I chose to do a walk away split on 24th August, Midday, on a nice sunny (with some thin cloud) day. 20deg c .
The hive consisted of two brood box’s. One a regular Lang the other a busso modified Lang to take frames X ways. Did not know which box had the Queen.

The top box a regular 8 frame Lang had 4 capped frames of honey the inner 4 had a mix capped brood, eggs, larve, pollen and honey. This box was taken some 100 m away and left closed for one and half days and opened with bushes. This was the stronger of the hives and has prospered. Yesterday I put another brood box on the bottom because they were running out of room. All good here.

Before I start… no I didn’t have a camera today, wish I did but it was supposed to be all straight forward look and close.

The bottom box of the split, was left where it was and I figured that it would reap the benefit of returning foraging bees. At the time of the split I looked at the frames quickly as it was starting to cool down. There were 12 frames X wise. The first 3 frames from each side had about 90% capped honey and built out out comb. I then looked at the middle two frames and had fully capped brood,eggs and a little honey but they were chockers full. Saw no queen cells or queen. I did not look at the last 4 frames as it looked like they had everything to go.
The first indication that this maybe the queenless hive was they were unsettled and didn’t want me around. Two weeks later they had settled and I figured the Queen had been made and was about to emerge on maiden flight.

Today I decided to go in and investigate and what i found was not good. Mainly because there had been a dwindling of bee numbers over past week and last day or so just one or two bees going and coming. There were three fully capped frames of honey at the back(so they are not starving) and a frame beside that half capped honey. Then (reading from the back) frames 5 and 6 were empty but combed. Then the weird and disastrous bit. Those frames I did not look have come back to bite me big time. The bees seemed somehow to have built from the top of frame7 to the bottom of frame 8 and from the top of frame 8 to the bottom of frame 9 and from the top of frame 9 to bottom of frame 10. It was like not exactly that, but the comb was layered between 3 frames all joined together. Frame 10,11, and 12 were just empty comb.
There were bees, not many and all the X over comb which had a bit of honey and and empty brood cells. I did the best I could with the comb which obviously came apart when I removed them. I did best I could to stick the frames back with just one comb per frame but it is still all messy and I could only comfortably put back 9 of the frames without squishing the last survivors.

My intention now is to recombine the hives back as one although there is only a few handfuls or so. No shb here so no worries there and I will use the newspaper between them.

It begs the question though about my x frame experiment. They are really nice to handle and take no effort, even when full of honey. Why did they chose to build comb the way they did. Interesting, I took out every frame except 2 at the end of March and took the honey and put back the brood. There was still plenty of food around for them and they had refilled most by Mid April.
I am not going to give up on the small frames just yet and will put formed comb, probably plastic, and see if they do better with that. Edit: See I do listen Jeff but tried the foundation less first.

Maybe try different split next time as well.

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I probably sound like a broken record, however the tried & proved method of properly fixing wax foundation to wooden frames, in my view gives the best outcome. It almost falls withing the concept of the KIS (Keep It Simple) method.

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With regard to the foundation less frames. Yes I am a bit of a slow to learn sometimes. Wife calls it Pigheaded. I say “I would like to try” :upside_down_face:

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I agree Bill, that Flow should be sending out wired & wax brood frames, however I would anticipate problems getting wax through customs. Then there’s the issue of properly fitting wax foundation. This video we made & uploaded shows what happens if wax isn’t fitted properly & is the reason why I try to always say “properly fitted wax foundation”. I think it’s the first thing a new beekeeper should learn & master.


I showed this to some people contemplating becoming new beekeepers. They said “does this mean we have to get this kind of gear”. I replied “yes, well if golf is someones hobby, you have to have a lot of gear”. With the wife being in her mid 70’s & hubby in his mid 80’s & basically crippled, I think I talked them out of the idea without trying to.

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Hello Jeff,

I just watched you little video on correct embedding- great!

It’s relevant to me maybe- as I don’t have an electrical embedder and have been using that little tool that looks a bit like a small pizza cutter. It’s basically a little wheel with a groove in it that you run over the wire with a board underneath. Sometimes I have been heating it in boiling water other times just softening the wax in the sun. But it isn’t perfect at getting the wire fully embedded at all spots and all times. I have sometimes dropped melted wax at a few points along the way to get a better result… I just put two frames into a hive last week- now I am going to inspect that hive to make sure that the foundation is still sitting straight. That hive was super packed with bees so hopefully they built them out before they could deform much…

I have been a bit worried about using an electrical embdder that I would go too far and melt right through the wax cutting the sheets into strips? does this happen much? I am guessing with practice you get good at it and don’t have any issues like that?

Also I haven’t seen an embedder like yours before- I thought usually you add the two electrodes to the wires on the ends of the frames and do all the wires at once?

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Hi Jack, I found the 12v embedding tool through Quality Beekeeping Supplies site. That’s the first supplier that I checked. The 12v embedding tool is by far the best way to do it. You need the board like you have. The embedding tool has 4 prongs that you hold down with a little bit of weight. When you press the switch, the current passes through the two outside prongs. You DO have to be careful. Like you say “with practice, you get good at it”.

The two middle prongs are needed to hold the wire down & secure. Once you depress the switch, you need to hold it there for a few seconds until the wax cools, then you need to wiggle the embeder off so that the wire stays put.

Just an observation I recently made was that the bees will readily draw beautiful comb on poorly fitted foundation in the honey super. However they are much more fussy in the brood box. They will mess it up like in my video if there is too much wire exposed.

What I found was, after they do a beautiful job in the honey super, then we gently extract the honey, we are left with a beautiful almost perfect fully drawn frame to place into the brood. The bees will clean up the honey, then the queen will get stuck into laying in it.

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I’ve found a checkerboard of foundationless and foundation is ok and helps give straight comb. Granted I’ve only played with this approach in a half-height but it worked without fail. I had a mix of foundation, foundationless, and half-foundation (essentially using the was foundation as a very big starter rather than filling the frame).

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Well, fitting foundation sounds a lot more hassle than correcting bulges the bees may build when left building their own foundation. That only happens when you have 3 or 4 empty frames on the outside anyway, if at all.
Checkerboarding as Snowflakehoney mentioned is totally perfect any time.
The problems with foundationless frames people are describing can only stem from not checking in time and manipulating frame positions to warrant the bees build straight foundation.
As a commercial beekeeper with 50+ hives I might go for foundation, like Jeff, but as a hobby beekeeper I am quite enjoying watching the bees do their thing so perfectly well.

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@Semaphore, havnt you sorted your profile yet Jack!
I use a 12V car charger and hold the +&- clamps, one to each nail fixing the wire. It takes about 8 seconds for mine and you can see the wire slowly melt into the wax, easy peasy, I used a bit of scrap wax foundation to test and burn through to gauge the time required originally, I used the cut strips as starter strips so none wasted. Some chargers will only work if there is already voltage in the battery so make sure the clamps spark when you touch them together if you choose this path.
I follow most of Jeffs advice, although I will not eat bee lavae, and prefer foundation except when cut comb is on the menu.

@busso, shame about your experiment. Might pop in for a coffee next month while I’m down that way.

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I’ll message you my phone number and email.

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Fitting foundation only sounds a lot more hassle to someone who hasn’t tried it or is intimidated by the prospect of learning how to do it. Believe me, I tried foundationless well before flow was launched. I came to the conclusion that foundation was WAY ahead of foundationless. Whether it be one hive or 50 hives. The hassles associated with me using foundationless frames led me to one day saying to myself “from now on, no more foundationless frames in the brood”. It’s fine to use foundationless frames above the QX between two frames of fully or mostly fully capped honey, to be used as cut comb.

I use foundationless frames in my observation hive so that I can show folks the bees building.

I would only use foundationless frames in the brood as a temporary measure if I was out of foundation frames.

PS. take a frame of fully drawn worker comb & stand it along side a frame of 2/3’s worker, 1/3 drone, large gaps in the bottom corners, there is no comparison. Not to mention the risk of SHB damage, if that applies. I know that applies to both of us.

I’m not sure if you are in the same drought as me, I’m not getting the normal spring buildup I usually get. During those times there’s no time to keep correcting the combs.

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Hi Jeff, yes, drought it is here too. Not a drop since June. The bees build up ok I think, but it’s my very first spring with bees, so can’t compare. Are you saying they build up more when there is no drought? I smell a lot of honey around the hives though, amazing to think there is usually more. What about pollen? I see different colored pollen coming in and there’s a lot of new brood.
Sciencemaster showed me how he fits wires, I don’t mind the fitting, just like foundationless better. I too usually follow your advice, just not always. Honestly, those bees build straight and very little drone cells. Once built, all is good. The foundation they build is like gold to me. My Italians built 8 empty frames out completely, attached them to bottom and sides, and filled them with their goods in the last 4 weeks. Of course I don’t need to spin my honey out with flow supers.
Busso mustn’t have checked up on his bees’ efforts in time.
I know a couple of beekeepers who prefer foundation because they get intimidated by correcting comb in an active hive.
Love our differences.

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Hi Weber, the bees do a lot more when there’s no drought.

As you say, you’re going into your first spring. Our differences may not be so evident had you kept bees through several seasons. It takes several seasons for us all to figure out what works best for us & what doesn’t.

We shouldn’t judge a technique on just one hive. It needs to be on several hives over several seasons. Then there is the dreaded SHB we have to keep in the back of our minds at all times.

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Hi Bill, after more thought on the subject. I was thinking along similar lines to the “set & forget” technique. Folks forget that if they allow the bees to build lots of drone comb during spring, & then leave it there for the rest of the season, the bees wont be able to produce workers in that drone comb later in the season, at a time when more workers are needed. When the bees stop producing drones, that frame of mostly drone comb sits in the brood box basically doing nothing. Just making up the numbers.

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Hi Bill, I helped a lady put a colony into her tbh. What a lot of dramas. I came up with the solution that the top bars need sides & a bottom. Then wired up & fitted with foundation. She finished up selling her tbh, then got 3 traditional Langstroth hives. She moved away from the area, so I don’t know how she is going with her bees.

I clicked on that but couldn’t find the discussion. It doesn’t matter, I’m getting back to my bees. cheers

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I really don’t know why people bother with only top bars. Not meaning to offend. To me it’s just a “no brainer” to use fully enclosed wooden frames. It’s not like pine is expensive. Wood being a natural product & all. It just doesn’t make sense. I saw a bloke on youtube fiddling around with an L shaped rod separating the comb from the side & bottom of a top bar hive. It took him ages to do a brood inspection with a heap of keen onlookers dressed in their brand new bee suits. The macho bloke doing the demo wasn’t suited up. No way. What’s a couple of stings between friends.

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I agree Jeff- I had one look at a YouTube video of a top bar inspection with that special tool- and thought, ‘no way- not for me’. I do understand them in a super simple DIY third world context - but that’s it. Even then I’d encourage them to build proper frames if at all possible.

I also understand the appeal of long hives- but standard langstroth all the way. Speaking of which today was a turning point for my long hive- the first ever drop of honey visible in my flow frames:

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This is a bid deal for me- proof of concept.

@eltalia I’m not being silent- just busy catching swarms while the sun shines :slightly_smiling_face: I’m sure your embedding device\theory is excellent- if I could fully follow it… I did some frames today using a battery charger mcguyver style and it worked well.

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Hi Jack your long hive was always going to work. I saw the aftermath of a long hive between two floor joists between the floor & ceiling of a two story house. The combs ran at tight angles to the floor joists, from start to finish. It started at the gap the bees used as an entrance & ran all the way back for about 4 meters. Similar to a long hive all the way.

Hey Jack, while typing I glanced up at your photo. Are those two bees facing us? If so, unless it’s reflections, but it looks like those two bees have beautiful wax flakes oozing out of their wax glands. A bit of a novelty to see.

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I think it could be wax flakes. The other day I cleaned off a coreflute and I saw lots of perfect clear little wax flakes glinting in the sun. They look like thinly glass fingernails… It was odd the bees must have been making them at a time when they didn’t need them?

I always knew a long hive would work- just not sure if the bees would use flow frames and a queen excluder in that configuration.

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Hi Jack, don’t be concerned about that. I’ve done a lot of cut outs in all sorts of places. A QX would be no barrier for a colony of bees wanting somewhere to store excess honey.

To finish my other story. I got to the house maybe 6 or 9 months after a pest exterminator killed the bees. Another colony moved in, the same bloke killed them as well. Anyway after the first killing the honey flooded the ceiling during hot weather & ran everywhere. The ceiling went all rancid & needed replacing. I removed the ceiling to discover the remains of the hive over the ceiling with the wax prints under the floor boards. That must have been before the year 2000, otherwise SHB would have made a smellier mess, not to mention breed up hundreds of thousands of more beetles.

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