You made me look again at @ABB photo and yes, two 12V batteries in series gives a 24V circuit, that is super charging, eh.
You could use you wife’s car battery if she is not wanting to use the car or a dedicated battery with charging for a day every three month would keep it usable.
2700 milliamps, or 2.7 amps as Jeff has pointed out is only a trickle charger. Some chargers will blow the circuit in a short circuit situation and I don’t know if the charger your asking about will fail or not, so my idea of using it to charge a battery. But for $10 it won’t break the bank if it fails.
Cheers
Hey Pete, one other question as you seem to be the guru on such matters. When embedding wax, and I intend to do them one wire at a time, not all four at once, will the battery drain much?
Will a charged battery let me do, say 20 frames, then still be able to start a car?
Have another look at Jeff’s video and you will see he only does a single run of the wire at a time, then moves to the next section of the wire. I do mine the same as Jeff does. I don’t know of any kit available to do all four runs of the wire in one go. Your only heating the wire for a second or less, just long enough that the wire is heated and it sinks into the wax and is coated by the wax.
Cars don’t have the larger batteries of yesteryear where they were a bit of an over kill but a good battery should start the modern car engine after doing that number of frames. If when you go to start the engine you only get a ‘clacking’ sound and no engine start the battery needs recharging and there is no gain in torturing the starter motor.
Good guess, in an earlier life I was a mechanical and electrical engineer with GM-H.
Cheers
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These are half dead salvaged UPS batteries. I heat whole wire in one go and it takes 4-5 seconds to bring wire to wax melting point. I am sure car starting battery can provide more current to make 12V sufficient.
Lead acid batteries have good shelf life if complete discharge can be avoided. Recharge them every 6 months and they will last some years.
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Hi @Beethoven, if the $10 charger fails, look for a second hand “old school” battery charger. I saw one on Gumtree for $10, without looking very hard.
Personally I wouldn’t bother with a secondhand battery. Especially if you’re only going to use it every 12 months.
I’m thinking of how I do mine in my dining room. I wouldn’t want to lug a battery inside when it’s so simple to use my battery charger.
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Yeah Jeff, I found one that looks like yours on Gumtree, Arlec brand, but the guy wanted $45 for it. K-Mart sell it brand new under their brand for $27 so that’s a bargain.
I still go for a second hand one, just to reduce the amount of rubbish that goes to landfill.
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The bloke might be negotiable, offer him 25 or 30. See what else he has on there because he could be a dealer. He might have picked it up at a garage sale for next to nothing. I’m just wondering if there could be one at a lifeline or a tip shop.
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Car boot sales is worth looking at well as week-end markets, The ‘old time’ chargers are better built having more capacity, the really old ones even had a fuse that you can replace if it blows.
I’m sure if you have the time you will find one.
Cheers
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Hi fellas, foundationless can work - shallows and mediums are fine, and for deeps I pop in a few bamboo skewers:
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Cheers Eva for that tip. Do you drill holes in the frame for the skewers?
That’s a very neat comb, unlike my experience so far with foundation-less. I don’t know whether some strains of bees are more likely to build straight comb, and others more burr comb. Another problem I encountered was a large percentage of drone brood.
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Burr comb could be perfectly straight. Are you sure you did not mean something else?
Why do you think this is a problem? 
Actually I did. I meant that when I used the frames as supplied and used just that starter strip like it was on one of the Flow videos, without foundation, the bees built comb all over the place, including at 90 degrees to the frames. It was a mess. To make it worse, I left it too long between inspections so that bit is totally my fault.
I refer to burr comb to any comb that is not where the beekeeper wants it. Is that the wrong definition?
Well, I didn’t know it was until it was pointed out to me that it is. I met this friendly beekeeper a couple weeks ago and chatted me up, and he gave me a lot of ‘tips’. This was one of them - the less drone brood you can get, the better, and strongly advised me to start using a full sheet of foundation. It’s much better to have worker brood as they do the valuable work of maintaining the hive and bringing in the nectar. I cannot repeat what he said of drones, as I assume this is a family friendly forum. : ) I though he got a point, didn’t he?
I call comb built outside the parameters of the frame as “wonky comb” like comb made in a frame but detours out of it, or comb that you might find hanging from the roof or a frame at the bottom, bur comb is when it is bridging wax and often has no cells in it.
A good answer from you to ABB about drone comb. That is one of the reasons I use foundation so there is less drone cells made. I’ve read that drones in a hive have a calming effect on the colony, but never seeing a droneless hive I’m not sure, but other than that they serve no use to the hive they are in.
Cheers
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Not really, but more often than not, when people speak about burr comb they mean this.
I have not seen that video but if it says the same as their information page:
I don not understand the rationale behind such recommendation. Poverty of Flow Hive buyers? Unavailability of foundation?
My first introduction to starter strips happened in 1983 if memory serves me at all. Desperate winter mice did a cruel job on our pack of foundation and we ended up with more frames than foundations. Getting another pack meant one hour walk to a bus stop, travel to city and there was little hope that shop had it. But even then a starter strip meant something that was wide enough to embed first wire into it.
So now you already know better 
However, foundationless frames may work quite well when added to already built frames, so bees may use them as a guide.
Yes, this is very popular idea. Drones do nothing and eat tonnes of honey. On other hand I have seen couple of research papers saying that the effect of allowing a colony to have as many drones as they want is not so pronounced in harvested quantity of honey. Bees compensate it by collecting more (given they have something to collect). Also drones contribute to hive temperature management as they may produce more heat than a worker.
I cannot really subscribe to any of these opinions based on my limited experience, but what I noticed, when I have one frame of drone comb in my hive (1 of 30 frames) I see less drone cells on other frames and it makes my life easier. I do not need to squeeze every possible kg of honey from my hive and happy to exchange it for easier comb manipulation. So I let them have as many drones as they happy with.
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Funny. I have to admit that I didn’t much left to buy foundation after I bought a flow hive. I think their rationale is/was to promote a more ‘natural’ way to beekeeping? Going foundation-less was convenient at the time for me, because it meant I didn’t have to go into the trouble of making a jig to wire frames, and embedding etc. I could jump into beekeeping straight away, out of the box.
That is a very interesting observation. Very different to what the guy told me. I’m not privy to any research that suggests either way, and probably I should do a bit more homework.
I will keep an open mind on this. Thanks @ABB.
Yes. I thought to add “after completed transaction” too 
Possibly. And you have got a ‘natural’ comb structure in your hive. Not only it was inconvenient but also illegal under Australian federal Apiaries Act. 2 penalty units, please.
Oh dear. I’ve been running an illegal operation? Let’s keep this between you and me ok? I’ve come clean now anyway. Should have kept my mouth shut. : )
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That could be misleading to a beginner bee keeper. The act only says that a frame must be removable from the hive for inspection purposes. That in itself is wide open to interpretation, is a frame that needs cutting free of wonky or bur comb in breach of the law?? Does it need to be lifted free with no attachment to anything else? I suspect, as with a lot of laws, that in this case bee keepers were not consulted at all.
Heaven forbid, if the stupidity of the act was brought to their attention undoubtedly the ‘powers to be’ would only make it more confusing for bee keepers. 
Cheers
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I admit I never bothered to check, but as far as I know in Australia all hives have to be as you describe, making skep hives or pottery hives illegal.
I don’t know whether @abb was referring to some other section of the legislation, or being a bit liberal with the interpretation to pull my leg.
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I think Section 11 is quite clear about this:
If an inspector finds that the bee‑combs in any hive cannot, without cutting, be separately and readily removed from the hive for examination, he may order the bee‑keeper to readjust the hive, comb, or frame, in such manner and within such time as he specifies.
However bees brought to Norfolk Island are exempt form this for some reason…
Just a bit. Inspector should order to rectify the situation first
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