What I would do in your situation is to find a local bee group or a helpful bee keeper and buy a wired frame with foundation fitted and put it into the outer position of the brood box today.
The brood cluster won’t be disturbed and they will build out the comb when it suits them to first be used for stores but then the inner half of the frame is available for the queen to lay in come Spring.
As you haven’t said, but I assume, the brood box has a gap left from the missing frame and that is not good for the colony. They will build wonky comb which will only make a bad situation worse.
Cheers
1 Like
@JoannaD don’t be too hard on yourself 
As with all new ideas and new efforts, unforeseen problems happen! The same comb collapse happened to me too, and it killed my queen 
which I didn’t know until I found an open queen cell later on!
Dawn and Peter gave you all the important points you need to go forth from here, but I’m replying to add a bit of context that I hope will help. When Flow went about putting together their amazing kit, they weren’t only focused on the harvesting of honey - they wanted to provide a whole package with equipment and information to support beginner beekeepers in the best way possible, for an international audience. A lot of newer ideas about how to control varroa mites were being discussed, after data from a couple decades of widespread miticide use showed bad effects on bees. Many well-known beeks promoted using foundationless frames, so bees would build cells to their natural size, as an important component of non-toxic mite-management. So, the Flow brood boxes all came with foundationless frames, and they released a nice set of instructional videos to point out details like how to lift and manipulate these frames, and also how to fit them with foundation instead.
When you’re a beginner, some of that info gets lost and it’s hard to appreciate the inevitabilities of physics until you witness them in action 
You can keep letting the bees build natural-sized cells, but it’s clear that the large vertical space of deep frames needs to be supported in some way - so if you opt for foundation, you can choose ‘small cell’ kind. Or, you can modify your frames with more structure like I did, by affixing 3 bamboo skewers inside the frame, spaced across vertically.
Good luck & let us know how things go! 
2 Likes
This is very informative thank you Eva
2 Likes
Hi Dawn- I did the rubber banding- how does this look to you? the bees started to build a bit of foundation in place of the broken comb. I had to break the broken piece a little to fit it into the space in the frame. It seems like it’s going to be so wonky! But boy do I love an experiment like this.
Thanks for your encouragement!
Joanna
3 Likes
Jack- Do you think this rubber banding is any good or should I take it out?
Well done, your banding looks great! Very proud of you for trying so hard.
1 Like
Hi Joanne…back to your original post…it’s unfortunate that this damage occurred at this time of year…i.e. after the honeyflow and just before winter. Your bees will not repair the damaged frame now unless you do some supplementary feeding (sugar syrup)…or you could save a full frame from your or another beekeeper’s hive and place it in the space. Your idea of an in hive feeder also has merit as I know some commercial beekeepers in my area (Alberta) winter their colonies with feeders in place. Just make sure the brood area is intact (frames moved together) and you should be adding feed if your single brood box doesn’t weigh 50-80 lbs…this is usually done in the month of September as bee dormancy hasn’t set in yet.
May I also recommend that you consider changing over to either plastic foundation or totally molded plastic frames…although politically incorrect, the plastic foundation/frames give you structural integrity that you can rely on that may come in useful down the road.
I am continually rotating brood frames into honey supers and vice-versa and I know I could be courting disaster by using wax foundation frames (especially un-wired) in my extractors…this happens much less frequently with plastic foundation/frames.
Plastic frames also give you the option of reconditioning…so at a certain point in their life you can just scrape the frame content right down to the plastic foundation without damaging the frame…the bees love this and rebuild it with relish.
Often the contents of the frame contain beebread which is an excellent natural supplement and I feed that back to the bees in the fall and spring…in the photo you can see that I left a strip of original brood cells down the center for comparison’s sake.
Living in Canada, you may or may not have issues with bears. The photo shows what happens this time of year. I saw the bear and it was huge…walked right by my extracting room when I was working. I had left a stack of empty honey supers outside overnight but they were very close to a running generator so I thought the bear would stay away…wrong! The solid molded plastic frames had been worked over by the bear but absolutely no damage to the frame other than comb being crushed. In my mind this was the ultimate test.
For a biological control of varroa, I use one drone foundation bait comb (you can purchase plastic foundation that is drone cell size which varroa prefer or build your own) on the outside position of my brood box.
I hope this may help…and good luck with getting that hive through winter.
Doug
4 Likes
Fantastic post, Doug. Thank you so much for weighing in. 
Just getting my wind…honey is all in pails…yeh…just prepping hives for winter Dawn. Will start posting again…you guys/gals are alot of fun!
3 Likes
that looks like it may be ok- but personally I wouldn’t have bothered for just one piece like that (especially after some time- if you could have done it immediately and maybe saved the brood it might be worth it)- and I would consider removing it. I say that because it has that dead brood in it which the bees will have to remove. However- if you do leave it I think the likelihood is the bees will do a fine job of repairing it. Just keep an eye on that one frame and correct it if they start to do weird things.
2 Likes
how was this season for you? Do let us know. Did you use your incredible 5 flow supers with extraction manifold set up? Very curious about your bee keeping operation.
Hi Jack…Thanks for asking…I’ll start a new thread and hopefully answer some of your questions in the process.
1 Like
Hi Doug
What’s your opinion introduce plastic all at same time or introduce a bit at a time. Clearly it’s a spring time operation.
I know each hive is different. I already use plastic frames and love them. But I tried to introduce plastic foundation a few at a time. Outside frames and move them inwards. Not very successful.
Anyone any comments please.
Very good question MrTF…and if you have the luxury of introducing them a few at a time, that’s best.
And as you probably suspect, the extent of your success is dependent on three factors…strength of your hive, how heavy the honey flow is, and (an often over-looked factor) how warm your hive internal is (over a 24 hr period). You may have seen the “curtains” of hanging bees on new frames when conditions are perfect…quite a marvellous spectacle…working on mass with an intelligence to be admired.
My experience indicates plastic frames/foundation…when coated heavily with beeswax…are attractive to bees for comb build-out. And I don’t hesitate to even coat plastic flowframes myself…photo shows an electric paint sprayer converted to a molten wax sprayer…double element heat source, one element for liquifying wax and the other for hot water to purge out the molten wax. The sprayer can be adjusted easily to put on any amount… just don’t answer your phone when you are in the process! And wear ear/eye/hair protection.
Not quite sure what you mean by
There is also another sure way of building out plastic foundation…and that is to use new plastic frames for new laying area in the brood area. I run only single brood boxes for most of the season…so I’m continually moving the outside pollen/honey frames away from the brood and putting them above the queen excluder. I’ll insert 2 to 3 new plastic frames close to center of the brood area…but always interspersed with capped brood frames. The queen is laying in the new cells before they get built out halfway…they seem to love this…and stalls the swarming process for 2-3 weeks. The photo illustrates what I’m trying to explain…there’s nothing to say that a brood frame can’t be used as a honey frame down the road and I do it regularily.
Please take into consideration that what I post works for me…under my conditions. I live in northern Alberta, Canada and run my hives inside beehouses summer and winter.
3 Likes