Ok, I’ve learned by now to fit foundation upon wires.
What always bugged me was the wires, while appreciating the strength.
I only use foundation at a time when I want to avoid excessive drone cell building or in a foundationless super of any size to avoid crazy comb.
At a bee meeting today, someone told me of another way to hold the comb in place in a frame. Some sort of wax grip that can be inserted through the little holes on the side of the frame.
I’ll try get a link posted here
Ok, can’t share it or don’t know how to.
You can get them on eBay by searching for
Wax foundation support pins
From Tarzali Honey.
It’s a new invention coming from the US that helps me to put foundation into any frame where I think foundationless wouldn’t work as well. Either to prevent drone brood or put a few foundation frames into a super as guidance for the bees.
I ordered a load today. Just thought of sharing it on the forum because I think it may be useful to some. I had not heard of wax support pins before. Wish I had.
After watching the Brushy Mountain video on support pins, it appears that he’s using them on foundation inpregnated with wire support as well as on ideal frames. I wonder how the support pins work on full depth foundation that’s not impregnated with support wire.
Embedding wax foundation into wired frames gets easier, the more you do.
@Webclan: I have been using them for two years and love them. I get them from Hiveworks in Adelaide.
Advantage: once you figured out how to fit them the are quicker and simpler to do than wiring, it is easy to re-use them indefinitely (I use all small gas torch to melt out wax residues and to sterilize them) and you don’t get issues you can get with wires (like the queen leaving rows along the wire without eggs). Also, using them for honey comb production with thin foundation you don’t have to negotiate around the wires when cutting the comb , you just pull out the pins before cutting.
Disadvantage: you cannot extract with them, but with my system I cannot and won’t extract frames out of the brood box anyway
On Langstroth frames I would use 7 pins, three on the bottom bar and two each on the end bars. I use 9 pins, but I am using deeper brood frames (‘Dadantrahmen im angepassten Brutraum’ :))
Fitting foundation with them takes a bit getting used to, most important is drilling the right size hole, 1/8" to be exact ( about 3,2 mm). To small (lets say 3 mm) and you get sore fingers trying to get the pins through and to large (even only 3.5 mm) and they keep falling out and you loose them and the foundation.
Michael, Dorrigo
Rod, I have reservations about them, especially with full depth frames. I’d like to see if full depth sheets of foundation unsupported in the middle remain straight for us. It’ll be interesting to see how they go. I think I recall people using bobby pins to do the same job.
