When my dad was beekeeping he and my uncle would put brass eyelets in the wiring holes. In his words this allowed them to tighten the wire much tighter, and have stronger frames. Looking around on Youtube etc this seems to be a dying practice. It seems like most people are barely even tightening them at all (ie only “hand tight”). Is anyone else doing it? Is it worth the little bit extra work to put them in?
OMGosh, Langs are just so very much more work than Top Bar Hives.
I’ve definitely been looking at top bar, or horizontal Langstroth hives. I do like the idea of the significant increase in comb strength that an enclosed frame gives. Every thing I have read or movies I have watched always spend a considerable amount of time warning about how you handle a top bar frame so you don’t break the comb. Not to mention I am in the desert and understand that sagging or collapsing comb can be an issue here in our summers.
Also there are a significant number of langstroth users who do nothing with their frames, simply turn the wedge top on end and tack into place for a comb guide and then slap it into the hive. So the amount of work put into it is very much a personal decision. It’s not necessary from what I see.
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Nope, not necessarily. Wiring frames is so much work than not wiring frames ; -)
With bar combs all you need to do is keep the edge of the comb pointed down towards gravity. Easy peasy. As for heat, I am in Texas where the roads melt in summer. Afternoon shade helps prevent collapsing comb, the bees do the rest. I love my TBHs. I wish Flow was fitted for TBHs but since there is no “standard”, I guess it was not to be.
There was someone on here who posted pics of adapting a deep lang box to the end of their top bar hive. Looked like a pretty easy conversion. You’d just have to figure the strategy of growing the hive so that the flow box was at the end where they were storing honey not on the brood side.
Thanks Adam, I saw that, I know most are into pure functionality when it comes to their hives, but I like pretty. The TBH/Flow experiments look very interesting and I hope they work. It’s going to be a great read when we find out the results.
This may be off the wall for some of you…but I just use bobby pins shoved through the holes in the frame. It works wonderful to hold the foundation in place until the bees draw out the comb. I tried the eyelets and wire tightened with a crimper. After 10 frames it was a no go for me.
For deeps I use 2 bobby pins on each side as pictured. On medium frames only one per side is needed. The bees cover up the bobby pins with wax.
If you are extracting your honey in a machine this may not be good for you.
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Hello Adagna, I’ve always used 1/4 inch staples next to the holes, 4 in one end bar & 2 in the end bar where you tie off the wire. This stops the wire pulling into the grain of the timber & is a lot quicker & less fiddly than eyelets.
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I’ve read that the reason for having tight wires, is so that the comb will survive centrifugal spinning. As I won’t be using one, can I get away with
- Looser wiring
- Using Nylon line
- Just bobby pins?
Especially in the brood frames?
You could probably get away with using just starter strips. The wire is to keep the foundation in place to ensure the wax is kept in formation, otherwise you get brood comb going off in all directions.
This was posted today courtesy of the The Bunyip Beekeeper
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I never use eyelets, I’m able to do the wires reasonably tight. If you want a strong colony, use full sheets of foundation. If you have any experienced beekeepers in your area, you might be able to sweet talk him/her into letting you wire up some frames on their wiring up board. Chocolates always works well for me.
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Hi there
We have used staples but have gone back to eyelets. We made a small tool to slip the eyelets onto and then knock them in with a small hammer.
Easy if you do them before you assemble the frames. The tool is a small scrap of wood that would resemble a fat short builders pencil.
I found a small drill bit that the eyelet would fit over.
Then drilled the bit into the end of the pencil, undid the chuck and left the drill bit in the end of the bit of wood…Walla you now have a tool that you simply slip the eyelet over one by one and tap it into the hole.
If I had lots of frames to do I would probably staple them but I only have about 35 so its easy to do.