Episode 193 – Frames, Foundation, and Bringing It All Together 🐝

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Hey, everybody.

Good morning.

Good afternoon.

Good evening.

Thank you so very much for voting me the 227th best looking podcaster in the world.

I do appreciate you.

And as always, feel free to reach out Jeff at beekeeping for newbies.com.

That's any WBEES.com.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, today we are talking about something that is occasionally

and sometimes and often a those three things don't go together, often a bit of an afterthought

in beekeeping.

And that's going to be frames.

People will spend a lot of time and energy figuring out what types of hive bodies, what

types of configurations, single, you know, single brood chamber with multiple mediums, double

deeps, queen excluder mediums, all the different ways you can put things together.

And then the very last man, they're like, yeah, just throw some frames in there and will

be good.

I wanted to take a few minutes for a couple of reasons.

One of them is that I wanted to talk to particularly some of the newer people who kind of barely

know what a frame is and what some of those options look like, but also talking to people

who've kind of been around for a while and who did things kind of the way that I did

where it's, I'll just buy a bunch of stuff and we'll figure it out when it gets here.

So my personal goal and objective is that by the time we get to the end of this episode,

you will know kind of what I prefer.

This is what I go to.

This is what I like.

All the reasons why different things work better or worse for different people.

You'll know the pros and cons of all the different types of frames, foundation, some assembly

tips and things that'll hopefully be pretty useful and practical in your exciting B journey

this spring.

Now you would think that it would just be a really simple choice.

Like here is your hive, here is your frame.

I don't ever remember.

It's funny how when you don't do something, it's not a hobby, it's not something you

do for a living.

But how you just don't see the details, like I've seen images or videos of somebody pulling

a frame out of a hive, but I had no idea that there were like 3,000 different ways.

It's not, there's not literally 3,000 different ways, but it's like if somebody can come up

with a new idea to sell somebody on why they need to go with their new cool thing and

it doesn't matter what industry it is, what field that it is, what you do for a living.

There are always people surrounding your organization that have a widget to sell you.

Like every industry has this.

I saw it in IT, I saw it in real estate, everywhere you go, there's always somebody who's like,

oh, you do this.

Well, let me show you this great thing that I can sell you that solves your problems and

makes it better.

As it relates to frames, I just think that keeping things as simple as possible is always

going to be the best path forward.

Now my recommendation kind of broadly, and you hear me say this a lot, but I think

it's good for grounding, for kind of bringing it back because when you get inundated with

all this information, you go to shows, like if you've ever been to a B show or you watch

a lot of videos, I mean I get into some of the YouTube videos and I start going down these

rat holes and I get over inundated with all this wild and cool, fun information and it's

just overwhelming.

So when you do that to yourself for fun and you're really struggling to figure out the

path forward, I want to give you just some really, really simple guidance and again, this

is stuff I say all the time.

Go back to the basics.

Now when you think about the basics of what bees have, what are bees provided with naturally

in the wild, they have a cavity generally in a tree or something similar, some kind of

structure that offers them some protection from the elements, but the thing that they

know how to do really, really well is take an empty space and make it livable.

They are able to draw comb, they can then raise brood, store honey and do all the things

they need to do just inherent in who they are as honey bees.

As it relates to frames and foundation and all of this, these are all things that we are

using to make our lives better and easier as beekeepers.

So the question then becomes what can we do that is most like what is natural for the

bees and also allows us to safely, securely and efficiently maintain their home and their

environment.

So when you get overwhelmed and you're thinking I have no idea what to do, go back to the

basics.

So with that, let's go ahead and dive in and we're going to talk about frames and we are

going to touch a little bit on foundation, but I do have foundation covered in a bit

more detail later on, but just at a very, very high level, think of foundation as the

whole middle section where the comb usually goes.

That's going to kind of be the foundation and we'll talk about how we get there in just

a minute.

Now, as it relates to just the frames alone though, I'm going to use Man Lake for my example.

I've purchased a lot of frames from Man Lake, I mean thousands of frames from Man Lake.

I think they are excellent.

The only ones I've had problems with are ones that I have abused in some way.

They have been stacked up and fallen over for whatever reason and they've broken.

But outside of that, I've never had them fail inside of an extractor or fail inside

of the hive itself.

There's never been an issue in my experience.

But the reason I'm using them as an example is it's really easy for you to just go to their

website and look at exactly what I'm talking about.

The options you would see at Man Lake for wooden frames, option number one, and I may be

just a tad off on this, but I think I've got all of it for option four.

For option one, there is a groove top.

When I say groove top, I'm talking about the top bar of the frame.

There is a top bar, a bottom bar, and then two end bars or side bars.

groove top, groove bottom, and the end bars have no holes.

When you see that, what that is telling you with the no holes in the end bars, that means

that there is no area to add additional support.

We'll talk about that in just a minute, what that support is.

What this means for you is that this is probably a good fit for a plastic foundation.

With the groove top and bottom, you can take a plastic foundation, press it into one hole,

bend it, press it into the other hole, let go.

It pops back into shape and now it is secured within the two grooves of the frame.

The next option is groove top, groove bottom, with holes.

Now if you do have holes in the side bars, you can still use plastic foundation.

What's nice now though is you can actually use solid wax foundation if you would like.

Then when I say solid wax, it's not truly solid.

I just mean that it is just entirely wax.

There is no other support integrated inside with that.

Just regular foundation can go in and you can use those holes then to provide pins.

There are pins that slide in and hook on to the foundation.

I usually, if I'm using them, I'll put two on each side so it'll be four per frame.

Some people only do one on each side.

Whatever works for you.

The way that those are designed is you kind of have to open them up just a little bit.

It looks almost like an old school clothes pin.

Not the kind that you push down and it has a spring, but the kind that's more of a friction-based

clothespin.

It kind of looks like a miniature metal one of those.

You slide that in and you have to kind of line up the foundation to kind of go right

into that little slot and it almost never works.

What I usually do is get it as close as I can and I just pinch the foundation right around

that little pin.

The idea behind those pins, it's not going to do a whole lot for you early on other

than kind of keep the foundation in place, but ideally as the bees are drawing up the

comb, it gives them a nice guide, keeps everything kind of in that nice vertical orientation

and hopefully will provide just a little bit more stability.

This is the type that I will use exclusively when I am using wax foundation and this is

called the wedge top split bottom with holes in the end bars.

Now the close fourth option here, I am going to do them at the same time because they are

basically the same wedge top groove bottom holes in the end bars.

Now I need to give you a little bit of an explanation here on what that wedge top means.

When you are looking at the frame, we usually look at it with the top of the frame on the

top and the bottom on the bottom.

What they do is they will cut a thin strip at the very top of that frame.

What you'll do is it's basically designed to just kind of grab it with your fingers

and bend it out a little bit and you can peel off a strip of wood that goes the entire

length of that top bar.

These are meant to be assembled with wired wax foundation.

What this means is there are actual little wires and they are probably about maybe three

inches apart or so that go through the entire height from top to bottom of your wax foundation.

One end will be flush with the foundation.

The other end has wire that extends below the bottom of the foundation and then comes

out at a 90 degree angle.

What you're going to do is take the foundation that has a flat edge, push that into what

is the bottom of the frame and then on the top piece where you have removed the wedge,

you have removed that little sliver of wood, you will then push the angled wires up into

that.

Now what happens is that piece of 90 degree wire that is sticking out, you replace the

little wedge piece of wood on top of that.

I usually just use a Brad nailer.

I put two Brad nails, one about three inches, two or three inches from one edge, one end

to bar and do the same thing on the opposite side and I don't glue those because they're

going to load it up with foundation and make it really sticky with propolis.

It stays in place really well.

What you're doing is you're using that little sliver of wood that you peeled off to hold

that foundation in place at the wire which then again goes all the way through the wax foundation.

I hope that that kind of makes sense.

If you don't have a real detailed understanding of what that looks like, you definitely need

to see an image and the image you're looking for is wired wax foundation.

Once you see that and you see the way those wires are coming out and they had that 90 degree

bend, then it makes sense.

These are incredibly stable.

I've used them for years.

It is a little bit more work.

There is definitely some work involved in getting those little wedges popped off and getting

everything put together and nailing it, but it's a really good frame approach.

So let's go ahead and talk about pros to some of the wooden frames.

These are very traditional.

These are very old school.

They've been used for a really long time.

It's very widely available.

You can almost always find wooden frames and foundation to go with it.

If something breaks, it's usually pretty easy to repair.

You can take it out and put a support piece in.

You can remove the broken piece and just replace it with a new one.

It's just kind of a simple basic design.

The foundation can be replaced independent of the frame itself.

So if there is a problem with foundation, you're just cycling it out over time or whatever.

You don't have to remove the entire frame or discard the entire frame just because there's

a problem with the foundation.

You can go with wax foundation like I just discussed.

You can do plastic or you can actually do foundationless.

You can just stick a frame in and say, here are bees.

Go forth and conquer.

If you do that, I recommend doing what is referred to as a starter strip.

Now to make a starter strip is pretty simple.

Different people kind of do it different ways.

But I take regular wax foundation that is not wired.

That would be preferable.

If it is wired, you can just remove the wire and you want to cut about one inch and you

can take one inch strips of it.

So if you have a single frame, you can usually make about eight or nine of these starter

strips with just one piece of foundation, I should say, not a frame, a single piece of foundation.

And what you'll do is flip it to where the top is down.

You take your one inch strip from the entire length of the piece of foundation and you

just set it into that top bar.

Now what I've done is a couple of different things.

You can kind of push it down a little bit with your fingers and give it a little bit of

support right where it meets the wood of the frame and just push down a little bit.

It doesn't have to be super glued in there and really packed up into that groove at

all.

You just need it in there good enough to stay.

What you're doing is you're showing the bees, hey, this is where I want you to start

your foundation from.

They go in there.

They see that wax foundation, they start to draw it up and they will begin to draw

comb in that spot and they'll kind of work their way down from there.

I like to give full sheets of foundation if I can, just to give them more to work with

early on.

It's not always practical, you can't always do that and you work with what you have.

I do recommend though using at least a starter strip.

Oh, I forgot, I also want to tell you there is another technique where you can just hold

the starter strip in place and just put a little bit of heat on it.

I like a small propane torch and just give it a little bit of heat and it melts a little

bit of it where it's contacting the top bar.

So you still again have the top bar upside down like I described before.

Let the piece of foundation in there that one inch high by the full width piece of foundation,

little bit of heat and it will just kind of melt it right into place.

That is also another way you can do things.

I meant to mention that as well as another option.

But anyway, I am a really, really big fan of these.

When you have to scale, when you have to grow rapidly, when you need a lot of frames quickly,

it can be time consuming to build them.

Now as you get better and you do more of them, a lot of people will make like frame

jigs and they're able to do things faster just by finding little shortcuts and things.

But you know, worst case scenario, if you have to sit down there and build them all one by

one, then enjoy it, build them all one by one.

But again, for me, it just kind of comes down to time.

If I knew, for example, I've got 20 colonies right now.

We're putting together a cell builder and we're going to do some queen rearing over the

next couple of weeks and a month from now, I'm probably going to have 25 or 30 new queens

that need to go into, let's just say deep, so there are a couple of mediums or whatever.

I'm going to put some frames on order.

I just, it just makes sense.

There's so many frames to build at one time, especially at this time of year, there's

a lot going on.

You've got other things.

If you haven't already built them by now, then you probably just need to go ahead and

order them.

So it really comes down to a time thing.

As far as the cost goes, it used to be considerably cheaper to just buy the frames, you know,

just wooden frames, buy your wax foundation, assemble them yourself.

It used to be noticeably cheaper, but I think now if you're buying in bulk and you are

buying a lot and you can get a little bit of a price break for doing so, yes, it's

still probably cheaper, but it's probably not that much cheaper when you look at your

time.

Again, do what's best for you on that one.

But the fact that you do have to do all the assembly and while we're doing that quick

reminder, you know, type on three and for all wood, you know, assembly with your B products.

So I typically will use like a Brad nailer.

So again, whatever will hold them in place, whether it's a Brad nailer, if you want to knock

a 5-8s nail in, you know, by hand and nail every one of them because you want to immerse

yourself in the frame building experience and take your time by all means do so.

Now, there's another thing you kind of need to be aware of.

It's not usually a huge issue, but sometimes if you don't assemble them properly or if you're

using old pieces of hardware, they can kind of warp a little bit like that, not so much

a warping as much as making sure they are assembled at 90 degree angles.

So you basically want to make sure you have four 90 degree angles inside of your rectangular

frame.

Most beehive hardware has a little bit of leeway and is kind of forgiving.

So if you're a little off left and right, it's not really going to be a big deal, but

you do want to pay attention for things that particularly may be almost like not so much

left to right with your angles, but almost like twisted.

You don't want things that are ultimately going to end up taking up more space and essentially

like pushing up into a Jason comb.

Again, not a huge issue, but just line up all of your stuff ahead of time.

And I definitely recommend doing your install and your build of these relatively soon after

you get your hardware or at least keep it in a climate controlled kind of an environment.

If you end up just leaving them somewhere where they get exposed to moisture and they have

a chance to, you know, swell and contract and maybe they get a little bit of sun for

some reason, things start warping and twisting.

You want to kind of minimize as much of that as possible, especially as pieces get longer.

It's kind of like, you know, dealing with that lumber.

If you've ever been to like a young lumberyard that stores anything outside and you know,

all these twisted two by fours and stuff, it's not quite that bad because these are shorter

pieces, but just pay attention that when you're assembling them, I guess the worst thing

that kind of almost happens is like you're putting the end bars into the top bar and the

bottom bar and they're not seated flush all the way.

So you end up with one piece higher than the other and then that kind of lopsides the

whole frame.

Just kind of do a little bit of your own quality control.

Now one kind of side con to using a wooden frame with a wax foundation years ago, I think

I discovered this one fairly early on.

I had a wax moth issue and the young wax moth larvae, once they were in, they started to

actually bore laterally through the hive and they were consuming all of the foundation

and the drawn comb on one side went through to the other and then fairly easily crossed

over to the next one and they kind of continued and they were able to move laterally through

the hive very rapidly.

I found that by going to a plastic foundation again, which we'll talk about here shortly,

that kind of created a barrier.

They actually had to go up against that, go up and over to the other side before they

could get to the next frame, again, not something that they can't figure out, but it did

slow them down a little bit.

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Now, we're going to talk here about one piece plastic frames.

So this is exactly what it, you know, what it sounds like.

The entire whole thing is just all plastic.

Usually it has some comb kind of an outline on both sides to serve as a guide for the

bees to hopefully draw their comb along that guided template that's inside of the frame.

But these are okay, sort of.

They're very durable.

They last a long time.

I have some today that I've had for probably a decade and they still look great and they

still sort of work.

Now, the reason I say they sort of work is because you have to do a little bit of work

with them.

What ends up happening is you got to kind of remember that there's all these things

that we as beekeepers think are going to happen and think should happen.

And then there's the bees who actually do whatever they want to do.

So we think, oh, cool.

This looks like a great place to draw comb and raise brood.

If you take a deep high body, for example, you get a new package of bees and you just

throw 10 frames in there that are all plastic frames.

You're probably going to have a hard time.

Plastic is just not something that the bees get really excited about and what they will

probably do is they will probably go to the very top, find some kind of a place up there

where they want to start drawing comb.

They will draw comb off of the top of one of those plastic frames and then extend the

comb down kind of in the middle in between them and then make space so they can lay eggs

on both sides of it.

So what you end up with is let's just go right in the middle and say between frames five

and six.

You've got this section of comb coming down.

It is dangling off the top of the frame.

They can get in front of and behind and it ends up getting really close to the adjacent

frame in this case kind of frame six.

And if you take it out and you were to flip it over like you wanted to look at the other

side, the whole thing flaps down.

I've had this happen.

I did a short on it a while back and I almost killed a queen like that.

They don't really know how to use it.

So they just kind of draw off of it.

Now again, it doesn't happen every time.

Sometimes I put them in and it's not a problem.

Other times I put it in there and I've had them do like two to three inch wide strips

and they'll make one of them and then they'll be a gap and then they'll be another one.

And so they'll do like three or four of these across the whole frame only using maybe

half of the total space, maybe even less than that, maybe more like, you know, a quarter

of it.

I don't know.

With these and just like any plastic foundation that you use, you're going to want

to try to pre-treat these and this is, you know, taking natural beeswax, melting

it down, taking a paintbrush or a roller or whatever and rolling that over the way that

I do it.

And I finally did a getting the swarm traps prepped video.

We've had some real logistical challenges, long story, but baby shower was today for

my daughter.

All kinds of crazy stuff going on.

We had like 35, 40 people at the house and I was running out of time with Phoebe.

So I just kind of had to do the swarm trap work on my own, but I will get that edited

this week and get that upload and show you what I did.

But the trick that I do and it's not, you know, it's probably 75, 80 percent as effective

as melting it down, but it's what I call like the surfboard technique.

And this is where I take and I did it in the video so I'll show you everything, but I

just grabbed a piece of old wax foundation that was in my shed.

I think there's like one and a half pieces, pulled the wires out of them, rolled it into

a ball and just rub it on there like a surfboard.

It's not perfect, but it gives them that natural, you know, wax smell that they're used

to.

And it makes the likelihood of acceptance of those frames go up significantly.

So I recommend any time you're using plastic foundation, make sure you pre-treat in

some way.

Now if you buy them from man like the brand new right cell wooden frames with plastic

foundations, they do come pre-treated.

And if you take them right out of the box as soon as you get them, they're probably going

to work okay, but it doesn't take long at all for whatever that light coating of pre-waxes

that they put on there to kind of go away and not work so well.

So step one on any of those plastic frames, you always want to make sure you do that.

Now another thing that I've talked about, obviously, how long-term and long-lasting they are,

which is great.

They're very durable.

They're very, you know, there's no assembly associated with them, so you take it out

of the box.

It's ready to go.

If you want to clean them, I take the whole thing, now throw it into a tub with some

soapy water and a brush and just scrub them down, spray them off to, you know, rinse

them clean, hang them somewhere to dry.

They're just, they're really easy to work with.

There is a kind of a downside.

There's like kind of the ears at the top that are supported by the hive body itself.

You know, if you break one of those and I've had some before, you're working the hive

tool and something gets stuck and you move it too far in one direction, you end up cracking

it.

I have had a couple of them break.

And unfortunately, there's not really a great fix for that.

Now, I can tell you off the top of my head, you can definitely get crafty and creative.

You could take a couple of screws, you know, maybe some drywall screws, run them into

the sides and make that serve as like a new ear to replace the one side to maybe get

you through the season or something like that.

But for the most part, you're going to have to replace it if you break it.

And one quick thing I want to go back on, I just thought about this.

If you have, you know, plastic foundation, you're using it whether it's in a wooden frame

or it's an entire full plastic frame, if you notice, they're drawing it weird, right?

They're drawing off of something and they do what we call kind of some wonky cone where

it's just going in all different directions.

Just press it flat.

Just go ahead and just press it flat down.

You don't have to like, you know, jam it down into the foundation, but just press it flat

and kind of make them start over.

That's a good way to get a handle on it quick before things get too out of control, where

it becomes really challenging is when they start drawing off of that foundation in really

weird and large ways, sometimes it then starts pushing up into the space of the other adjacent

frames.

It can, if you need to move anything around, it may be fit perfectly next to the other

frame because they had already had a kind of a cut out for it.

But now you move it somewhere else and there's no space for it.

So it's literally right up against the adjacent foundation from, you know, the frame that's

right there.

So try to press that down early and just make them rebuild it.

Now, you know, again, if you're in an early building phase, that's the only foundation

they have.

They're replacing, you know, all the workers that have aged out from packages of bees

or whatever.

Maybe you give them a little bit of latitude in those first, you know, a couple of weeks

in a new colony, new hive and all that.

But as a long term strategy, don't let them keep doing that because it'll just make

everything a disaster and a mess.

And when you're pre-treating, don't use like candle wax around the house or a lot of

synthetic things.

You want to avoid any kind of, you know, synthetic materials that might be petroleum based

or have any kind of additives or anything that could be harmful to the bees.

So what I had originally done was broken out the foundation discussion into a completely

separate one.

But I integrated a lot of it into the frame chat.

So I'm just going to kind of go back and hit just really some highlights of what we already

talked about.

So we don't waste too much of your time here.

This foundation, you have basically two options.

You've got wired or unwired.

The wired is going to provide a lot of support.

That's where I mentioned before, you can get the wedge style top bar where you're knocking

off the slice of wood and you're pulling the support wires into that space, nailing that

strip of wood back down.

It really provides a lot of great support across the entire frame and its foundation.

That's great.

Unwired essentially is you're getting the same foundation.

There's just no wires in it.

Now you technically don't have to provide any support.

You can just stick the foundation, again, we're talking all wax foundation.

You can just stick it in there, get it as vertical as possible and let them go.

For the most part, you can kind of get away with that a lot, especially if you're just

dealing with brood frames because they, you know, they get lifts it out.

You look at them.

They get moved left right.

They go to other colonies and things like that.

When you're dealing with honey supers, at some point, those are probably going to end

up in an extractor.

When they go into an extractor, they're going to spin really, really fast.

And that's a centrifugal force.

In an effort to push the honey to the outside so it can drain down will also cause the entire

foundation to push as well.

If it is not reinforced properly, you can have what's called a blowout and it just literally

pushes the entire center section of foundation completely out of the frame.

That's where that wired foundation really comes in handy.

Now the plastic foundation really does quite a bit better.

This is another area that the plastic foundation does kind of shine because it really locks

very well into the groove of the top and bottom groove.

So you definitely significantly reduce any risk of blowout.

Very easy for newer beginner beekeepers.

They're very durable.

They last a long time.

Just like regular wooden frames, you can pop the plastic out, clean it up, pop it back

in.

Wax it.

You can take all the plastic out of all of them.

Go pretreat them all and then stick them all back in later.

A lot of flexibility there.

I do use quite a bit of that and like I said, very rapid for quick growth and expansion.

You can just buy a box, throw them in, kind of get trucking.

And then like we did, again, touch on the foundation list and just using a starter strip

and some of the kind of pros and cons of that.

So I'm going to skip right to kind of the next little piece I want to talk about.

And that's the actual cell size.

Now there is a type of frame that you can get and it's more of something that you would

see like in a plastic type of foundation where you have what's called the small cell.

And it's basically just a cell that is slightly smaller in size than your standard cells.

So the little template that you kind of see on the foundation itself is basically just

a little bit smaller.

The idea here is that using small cell foundation, there's basically mixed kind of evidence

depending on who you talk to, what you look at, what you see and how broadly you're looking

at things in the study.

But basically indicating that some people feel that by using small cell foundation, they

have less space for vero mites to reproduce during development.

So with fewer of them able to reproduce and lower numbers, you would then have fewer

mites within the hive.

Again, kind of mixed evidence on this one.

Different people have seen and reported different things.

I'm not interested in it at all.

I have never pursued it and gone into it because I figure reducing, let's just say hypothetically

it reduces things by 10 or 20%.

It doesn't stop anything.

It's not preventing the vero mites.

So I'm going to go spend money for a new kind of frame or new, I'm sorry, a new kind of

foundation that has a smaller cell to reduce something that I still have to treat for

anyway.

So to me, I have absolutely no interest in that at all and I have no intent to pursue

it.

But again, if you hear of small cell, that's what it is.

It is a management, philosophy, approach, certainly not anything you would ever be required

to do or use within your apiary.

But I do want to talk about another strategy, which is kind of interesting and this is drone

comb.

So drone comb is a bit larger than regular worker comb.

And you'll typically see this quite a bit, especially in the spring, down like in those

lower parts of the frame, they end up being down the kind of lower left, lower right.

Sometimes you'll see where they're connecting spaces between like an upper and lower deep.

There'll be some extra comb they'll draw in there and that quite often ends up being

drone comb.

It's just a slightly bigger cell than what you would see because again, drones are definitely

larger than workers.

So you're going to have a larger space for them to develop.

They take three extra days to develop.

So it makes sense that they get a little more extra space and extra room.

What a lot of people will do with drone comb because veroamites like it, it's a bigger

space for them.

And they know they're going to be capped in there or at least the ones that have learned

to survive have figured out that they can be under there for an extra three days more

time to reproduce.

So what people do is take these frame, an entire frame of drone comb, put it into the hive

in the spring, the queen lays this whole thing up with a bunch of new, you know, unfertilized

eggs which end up becoming drones and then continues on with her rest of her laying activities.

Veroamites gets drawn to it.

They are completely fed, capped.

And then what you do is once they're all capped, you take them out and you have a couple

of different ways you can kind of handle that.

One of them is to start cutting them open and look on the inside, take some tweezers and

remove a couple of them and see how many mites are in there and just kind of get a ball

park of, you know, how infested that the colony is and see what's in there.

So basically what you're doing is you're taking the mites that may have made it through

the winter and they were just, you know, hitching them right, waiting for the spring for

the first chance to get into some brood and they jump into this drone brood and boom,

they're out before they even have a chance to emerge and to infect, you know, the rest

of the colony.

So this is kind of a cool strategy.

I do not actually employ this myself, but I think it's really neat.

I think it's a great idea and I think in places where you have, you know, problematic

recurring issues with, you know, getting mite numbers and mite counts under control and

you are in a flow, you are, you know, actively raising brood within your colonies because

there's a flow on by all means, it is definitely worth giving it, giving this a shot and seeing

if this approach can work and like I started to mention, I kind of got a little sidetrack,

but yet chickens love to eat these things so you can, you know, scrape them out, give

them to the chickens, let them pick through them and go ahead and, you know, prep them

again for whenever you use them within your strategy.

So the one other thing I wanted to touch on briefly, it's something that comes up quite

a bit.

So I forget I would just go ahead and mention it now and it's around replacement of

comb and kind of how you rotate comb and things like that.

I have a couple of basic rules that I sort of do.

If I have a, anytime I have comb, as it starts to get really dark, that brood frame or

that brood comb that ends up getting really, really dark, dark alone doesn't really bother

me.

When it starts to get to a point where it's becoming brittle, that's when I'm like, all right,

you got to go.

I've seen people go to varying lengths to be very meticulous about how they document and

how they maintain their frames.

These are things that you can add into your notes.

If you wanted to actually number your frames in some way and somehow mark them with identifying

marks and say, you know, all of these frames were installed on this data of that date.

I feel like it's kind of overkill.

I just don't think you need to be that involved, but you know what, if you like to do it and

it's kind of a fun thing for you, then feel free to do so.

But I just really recommend just kind of eyeballing things and say, okay, this comb right here,

it's really dark.

It's getting brittle.

I'm going to go ahead and cycle this out.

You can also do things where maybe you just do something really simple, kind of like we

do with queens where we say, you know, I don't do this because I'm kind of the color blind

guy.

So it doesn't really matter to me, but I prefer certain colors and I just do all of mine

those colors.

So it's pretty much going to be like yellow or white for the most part for me.

They're nice and bright.

I can see them really easily.

So I don't follow the year thing, but maybe, you know, you put some kind of a color

band or do something on it.

You just know.

All right, every so many years, I'm going to go ahead and replace it.

Now, the old school way that people used to always do this is whenever they were selling

a new, they'd always send them with their old frames.

That certainly is one way to do it.

But what I like to keep in mind and to remind others is the brood frames, particularly

this is a history of the colony and its health and things that's been exposed to.

There can be a lot of things in there.

Some of those things can be bad.

Some of those things can be relatively neutral.

But you can have pathogens and pesticide residue and you can have different things in

there.

So you probably want to be thinking about like, you know, maybe like every three to five

years, rotating things out, you definitely don't want to come in and like do a complete

overhaul at one time, right?

You want to have continuity within the hives.

You want them to still be up and operational and functional, but maybe around the three

year point or so, and you replace 25 or 30% of your frames.

And then the next year, you do the same thing again.

And then by the time you get to the five year points, who in years three, four, five,

you've now replaced everything, right?

Just use your best judgment.

Another thing, too, to kind of put in the back of your mind is, you know, maybe you're

doing some swarm trapping like that's a really great place.

I was just doing this the other day.

I was going through some old combs that I found in a freezer that completely forgot about.

And I put some of that old comb into some swarm traps.

And that's great.

I mean, that tells scout bees and bees looking for a new home.

Like, hey, bees used to live here.

This is a great place.

And it'll be a great place for you to settle down to come here, you know, vacancy.

So if you don't want to use it for your regular hives, use it for a swarm trap.

But again, don't spend too much time and energy getting bent out of shape about it.

Just kind of keep it in mind.

Frame starts getting a little bit old.

It's getting brittle.

Start thinking about replacing it.

Last thing I want to talk about before we wrap up for the day is just the spacing of frames.

There are different schools of thought here.

I'm kind of just going to tell you what I do.

And my way of doing this, I've full disclosure is not the most popular way of doing things.

The most popular way that I have seen is people will take all of the frames.

Let's just say again, 10 frame lengths are off deep.

They will push everything from frame one towards the middle, everything from frame 10 towards

the middle.

So frames one through 10 are all connecting.

The whole way down completely connected to one another.

The wood sidebars are all touching each other.

And there's a big space at the beginning of number one between number one and the side wall

and between number 10 and the opposite side wall.

There is one and only one reason why I don't do this.

In order to make that happen, you have to put the frames back in and then use the hive

tool to press all of them up against one another.

You are going to kill bees doing this.

There are going to be bees inside in between the frames at the time that you're pushing

then that you will not be able to see and you're going to squish them.

I go ahead and I try to leave space at one end or another.

It just depends on where the setup is for this hive and where I'm usually going to

approach it for my inspection, but I try to leave the space on one side.

And then I will wedge in between frames one and two towards the wall by frame one in order

to remove that frame.

And then from there I can then remove each one, two, three, four down the line like that.

When I put them in, I space them pretty much equidistant with the exception of the very

first frame.

I do get the first frame very close to frame two so that I have plenty of room to push

that frame out of the way.

That's another piece of the argument.

The argument to keep all of them stuck together is if they're all stuck together, less total

surface area to be stuck with probalist and easier to separate.

I'm not saying that's not true.

I'm just saying I don't like squishing the bees by pushing them all together like that.

That's just not what I do.

But again, like everything else and be keeping fine with works for you, what makes you happy,

what you like.

You know, I do it one way, 15 other people do it 15 different ways and you'll find a

way that works for you too.

Well, I tried to cram a whole lot of information in here about a bunch of different things with

frames and foundation.

And I think that the real key to the whole thing is just keep it simple, keep it basic.

Be mindful of the potential for, you know, if you're using regular wooden frames with

unsupported foundation, the possibility of having a frame blow out and extractor, if

you're extracting honey.

But outside of that, most of them kind of don't matter.

You go with what you like, just know whenever you're using plastic.

If you're using plastic parts, you're probably going to have to pre-treat when you're using

all wooden ware with regular real wax foundation, bees tend to accept that much better than

anything else.

It gives them a nice little head start.

It's a great way to go.

But like I told you about the wax moth, it's allowed to cut all the way through.

But here's another one for you.

I completely forgot about this one quick little nugget.

If you find a queen cell in a frame and you have all wax foundation, you can take a filenife

and literally just cut that whole thing out in a circle, pull that whole piece of comb

out, go stick it somewhere else in another hive.

And yeah, you're going to sacrifice a little bit of some brew that are on both sides of

it or whatever.

But you've got this golden queen cell.

You can now stick into another hive somewhere else.

If that's a plastic foundation, you can't do that.

I guess you could, but you're going to destroy the plastic foundation and have to make

the bees really angry to cut through it.

So there's pros and cons to all of them.

Try them out.

Try different things and see what works best for you.

And over time, you'll figure out a strategy that hopefully will work for both.

Smaller time, hobbyist, and then if you start expanding and you really want to grow and

you need to grow rapidly and you may switch over and start doing some of the plastic stuff

as well, you'll figure it out.

So try a few different things out, experiment with different things, see what you like

best.

If you're not sure if you want to incorporate it into your primary, main production colonies,

try it in a nuke, try it in a swarm trap, try different things, maybe in sort of that

will be your e-valent test environment before you take it to the big leagues.

Just play around and have some fun.

All right, folks.

It's going to be a busy week again this week.

We've got about four or five more episodes in our kind of getting prepped for spring list

that we have going here, but I've got to wrap it up for the night.

I'm completely smoked and exhausted and this is going to be released for you, hopefully

in about an hour or so.

So take care of me kind of one another, remember that I love you and there's nothing you

can do about it.

We'll talk to you soon.

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