drawn comb

[Susan]

In prep for module 1, how do you get drawn comb.

I have done this in past years by putting a brood box with foundation on top of brood colony with 2 frames of brood inserted in middle. Is there other ways please? What about supers? How do you get the foundation drawn out?

[masterbk]

The method you describe for getting brood foundation drawn is OK as is shook swarm, Bailey comb change, Demaree and the classic of giving a swarm frames of foundation (and feeding them). With supers add the super of foundation directly above BC + excluder during a heavy honey flow (with a super of drawn comb above it)

[gavin]

Welcome to the forum Susan!

I'm sure that these are all good answers for Module 1. However there are many ways of getting drawn comb. Much of my comb comes from adding a second brood box in mid or early spring to the top of strong colonies, rather like you but without splitting the brood nest across the boxes. The strong ones are keen to work upwards. On the rape I'm happy to get more bees and comb in preference to big honey crops. As simple as that. Also you can add single frames of foundation to the immediate outside of the spring brood nest, but do it too late and you can get drone brood rather than whole frames of worker. Murray McGregor adds frames of foundation in the early autumn to colonies on good forage or with feed on top, one at a time. At that time of year they will not be raising drones.

[Rosie]

Gavin, I put frames with just starter strips in my brood boxes just to get drone comb but I am surprised that you would get drone comb on what I assume is worker foundation. Before I started using starter strips almost all my drone comb appeared on the underside of the frames. The rest appeared in damaged comb but almost never on worker foundation.

[Jon]

Rosie, I do it much the same as you but I don't even use starter strips, just a frame with a double strand of fishing line in between two previously drawn combs.

[gavin]

Certainly free-drawn comb when the colony is big enough in late spring tends to have a fair proportion of drone, but don't you often get some drone o the comb when they have only worker foundation at the same time? Get the same foundation drawn earlier, or in September, and it is all worker.

Half expecting now to be outed as a purveyor of myths in Jon's talk to the UKBA next weekend .... ;)

G.

[GRIZZLY]

Just stick a brood box of fresh foundation over a strong colony, then feed them a gallon or two of syrup. They will guzzle on the syrup and draw out the foundation at the same time. Watch you don't stimulate swarming tho'.The comb is then taken off and distributed around colonies as needed.

[brothermoo]

You can, if you run double brood, stick foundation/starter strips in a new box in the middle of the two boxes. They draw it out so quick that if it is very warm weather it can get messy if you try pulling frames
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[Susan]

Thank you all the comments are helpful. Why would you want starter strips in brood frames?
I thought they were only used in supers for selling honey comb, like Heather.

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[brothermoo]

Starter strips means more fresh wax instead of all foundation plus it allows the bees to draw out the ratio of worker to brood cells they want

That's of course if you want to let them do that, some people prefer to determine their drone cell frames for varroa trapping.

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[Rosie]

Thank you all the comments are helpful. Why would you want starter strips in brood frames?
I thought they were only used in supers for selling honey comb, like Heather.

I use starter strips or the witness mark of cut out frames on all my super frames. I haven't bought super foundation for years.

As others have said I use starter strips in brood frames in order to allow the colony to produce as many drones as they feel comfortable with. I like to put 3 in each colony and it usually works out at about one frame full of drone cells. The other starter strip frames usually end up with worker cells with very little mixing of the 2 sizes. Once the drone frame has been drawn I put wide spacers on that particular frame despite it being hoffman so that its spacing is a bit greater than normal to accommodate the deeper cells.

I support the starter comb in the brood box with fishing line as Jon does but I find I can extract unwired super combs without breakages so I have no need to use fishing line or wire. All this saves me time and money and I think the bees are happy to have work to do. I don't buy this claim that a pound of wax costs 8 pounds of honey. I think contented bees make honey and giving work to bees in every stage of development helps.

However, if you are taking an exam it's probably best not to mention anything that sounds unconventional in case the examiner happens to be unsympathetic.

[masterbk]

Examiners are well aware of the unconventional & will give the candidate credit for their answers if they are workable and backed up with valid reasoning. Our marking schemes take into account that there are many ways of "skinning the proverbial cat". Also each paper is marked independently by two examiners and then moderated particularly if there is a significant difference between the marks awarded by the two examiners.

[Rosie]

I know that's true of England masterbk but I don't know about other countries.

[Mellifera Crofter]

I use starter strips or the witness mark of cut out frames ...

What is a witness mark, please, Rosie? Also, what is a cut-out frame?
Kitta

[Rosie]

Sorry Kitta if I used too much jargon. When I harvest heather honey from my supers many of the combs end up being cut out of the frames in preparation for pressing the honey from the wax. Similarly if rape honey sets in the comb I cut those out too, although I have stopped taking bees to rape recently.

When I cut the combs out I cut as close a possible to the side bars and bottom bars but leave a trace of comb under the top bar. This is the "witness mark" I mentioned. To do this I make 2 passes with the knife under the top bar. The knife is held at an angle to the underside surface so that it skims along the edge and not flat against the face of the wood. I do this from both sides and so leave a vee shape under the centre of the underside of the bar. The bees readily draw new comb from this fragment and tend to follow the line quite closely. In fact I won the frame class in our local honey show a few years ago. The class was for an extractable frame and I feared the judge would score mine low because of the lack of wire but he didn't.

With brand new super frames I use a 6mm starter strip.

I hope that is more clear.

[Rosie]

I should add briefly that I would not use unwired comb without first "doctoring" your extractor. A standard extractor would break the combs.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Sorry Kitta if I used too much jargon. ... Similarly if rape honey sets in the comb I cut those out too ...


I should add briefly that I would not use unwired comb without first "doctoring" your extractor. A standard extractor would break the combs.

Thanks Rosie - no, not too much jargon. I need to know those too.

I'll be going a bit off-thread now, but how do you process the cut-out combs of set OSR honey? Also, how do you 'doctor' your extractor to take unwired frames? Do you put the frames in cages into the extractor?
Kitta

[Rosie]

Hopefully Susan, the original poster, will forgive us for wandering slightly off thread. Perhaps Gavin will be kind enough to move us to a new thread if we wander too far.

First set OSR honey. I cut out the set combs and break them all roughly into a plastic settling tank with a honey gate near the bottom. I then put the tank into my warming cabinet which has a fan, heat source (light bulbs), thermostat and thermometer, all built into an old upright freezer. I turn the temperature up to what would normally be considered to be a damaging temperature of about 60 degrees C. Because the honey needs a large amount of latent heat to melt the crystals, the heat penetrates the tank very slowly. The honey melts from the outside and drains to the bottom of the tank. Every hour or so I will return to the tank and drain off the liquid honey before it soaks in the heat for long enough to spoil. Now and again I stir up the goo as both the wax and the honey will be soft by now and breaks up easily. I keep drawing off the honey until the flow rate get frustratingly low. During this part of the process some of the honey might be exposed to the heat for 2 or 3 days but it does not spoil because it is drawn off soon after each crystal heats up enough to melt.

When I stop drawing off honey I pour the remainder into a stainless steel pail and heat in an oven set to 90 degrees. A pale full takes about 6 hours to melt completely (wax and honey) by which time the honey is ruined. I let it cool overnight and then lift off the hardened wax cap using a corkscrew. The honey left in the pail is then filtered and used in cooking. The honey that had been drawn out of the settling tank invariably passes my glucose oxydase test and I blend it with cold extracted honey and make soft set honey.

Our oven is heated by electricity but I would be nervous about putting wax in an oven with a naked flame. If you follow my method please don't blame me if you burn the house down!

While in the warming cabinet stage you will need to turn the temperature down overnight to, say, 35 degrees to avoid spoiling the honey.

As for doctoring the extractor I converted a manual into a powered one by installing a small DC motor and a variable voltage supply to give a smooth and controllable spin. I also fitted a wooden frame to the feet and below the frame I fitted the softest rubber anti-vibration mounts that I could find. The whole thing wobbles like a spin dryer when stationary but, like a spin dryer, hardly wobbles while spinning provided I start it slowly while the frames are heavy and out of balance. It think this arrangement works a lot better than the more conventional castor method and is far kinder to the floor.

I hope that lot helps.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thank you, Rosie - that's an interesting detailed reply and a great help.
Kitta

[Susan]

Thanks, drawn comb took us a distance. Rosie you give your bees plenty to do. I also used a warming cabinate home made with a big box insulated with polystyrene and heated by a light bulb under a tin can. It works to my amazement and gently warms the honey.
As for the drawn comb I had my answers from the expert thanks.

[busybeephilip]

Rosie,

Perhaps you could elaborate on your glucose oxidase test ? do you also test for HMF

[Rosie]

Rosie,

Perhaps you could elaborate on your glucose oxidase test ? do you also test for HMF

I know of no domestic scale method of testing for hmf but it is quite easy to get an idea about glucose oxidase activity.

The method I use is to dilute honey in room temperature water (1 part honey to 4 of water - ideally distilled), stir and allow to stand for 1 hour. During this time hydrogen peroxide is produced and its concentration is an indication of the enzyme activity. After the hour I just dip a peroxide test strip into the water as per the instructions on the test strip container and read off the concentration. The test strip works a bit like litmus paper and changes colour in proportion to the concentration.

Cold processed honey will be found to contain about 20 parts per million. Cheap honey from a well-known supermarket contains none (according to my test) and 2 parts per million is said to be roughly equivalent to the legal minimum. By implication the enzyme activity also gives a clue about hmf concentration as they are both affected by heat and time. I am not sure about hmf but I have found that enzyme activity is also affected by exposure to sunlight.

I found that formerly granulated rape honey from my decapping tray was dead and so I sold the tray and developed my own method of processing granulated combs. It turned out to be cheaper, faster and easier to clean than a decapping tray as well as capable of producing better honey.

[busybeephilip]

Thats really interesting and I must try this. I notice that RS components sell H2O2 test sticks at a reasonable price. It would make for an interesting club nite topic testing different persons honey for over heating. If the commercial honies fail the test then it shows just how valuable the product that we produce really is.

[Rosie]

We did exactly that when I was with Derbyshire beekeepers about 6 years ago. 2 samples failed out of 14 and one had been bought-in by an old lady who's crop had failed and the other was a commercial one in a dark jar and sold as active honey. Actually a third one failed but it was one that I had deliberately overheated to show people how a spoilt sample came out (I had expected every sample to pass). The lady with the bad sample was very embarrassed although we all tried not to rib her so you have to tread carefully.

I forgot to add that the water/honey proportions are by weight.

I got my second and subsequent tubes of strips from RS and paid about twice what I paid for my first ones but my original supplier refused to sell me more in retail quantities. I think I would have had to buy around 1000 strips instead of my usual 50. RS strips measure up to 100ppm but 25ppm strips would be more appropriate. Unfortunately I have never found 25ppm strips in this country.