I’ve been experimenting with adding ideal supers to Flow Hives lately.
Unfortunately for one hive I left too much time between inspections and the bees have built the comb diagonally (I’m definitely not looking forward to correcting this!).
I included about a 1.5 inch comb guide made from wax foundation but it obviously wasn’t enough. Weekly inspections would have given me ample opportunity to correct and guide the bees for straight comb, but I wonder if anyone has any other tips for supporting straight ideal frame comb?
Has anyone got any lovely photos of an ideal honeycomb frame that they’ve harvested from their Flow Hive? I find ideal frames perfect for harvesting honeycomb as the size is ideal for consumption. Perhaps that’s where it got the name from…
For those that don’t know, ideal supers are able to be added to Flow Hives, you just need to select the right size (e.g. 8 frame ideal super fits with the 6 frame Flow Hive)
I have had great success in putting an Ideal super on top of my Flow Super. It was just an experiment to stat with, to see if the bees got curious about the extra space and decided to use it. Which they did, BUT it was at the expense of ignoring the Flow frames!
It seems they had filled the outer edges of the flow frames and left the middles empty ( I assume they thought her royal highness was going to come up & lay in the middle ) But of course with a QE in the way that was never going to happen.
Anyways I ended up getting 5 or 6 full frames which I then was able to cut ideal sizes of comb out of & pack them into little containers to sell locally.
As for tips on how to get the bees to draw the comb straight down, well using foundation wax would work.
But what I did was cut an inch long strip of foundation wax, and as long as your frames have a groove in the top, use a little glue to stick the foundation in the groove, and the inch long strip will hang down straight, giving them a great starter to follow down.
Ive also used those medical sticks ( you know the ones doctors use when telling you to open your mouth wide & say “aaaah” . I glue them into the froove, leaving about 1cm to stick down for the bees to draw onto.
Perfectly straight comb!! This is what I’m looking for
Unfortunately with the inch of foundation at the top wasn’t enough for the colony I tried this with but I’m keen to keep trying as I just love the perfect size of the ideal frames for honeycomb harvesting.
