I’m interested in being a good landlord to my hives. If I am to do this, I should imitate nature as much as possible. Dee Lusby has written and spoken about a way to build the foundation for the bees to better imitate nature.In nature, the bees may hang a feral hive from a branch and build their comb out from there. When Michael Housel studied the feral comb, he found that the center of the cell has a “Y” in it. In natural comb on either side of the center the “Y” faces up toward the outside of the hive.
When foundation is in a frame, you can turn the frame from right to left and see the "y" facing up on one side and the "y" facing down on the other. Here's a link
to see the Y positions.
When I added the super to Destin today, I marked the frames for Housel Positioning (HP) with an indicator of the "Y" up or down position. See how the up "Y" is on the outside from the center outward in each direction.We'll see if the bees take to this more eagerly than they have with my previous random foundation placement
I have also followed the teaching of Dee Lusby and put my foundation in according to the Housel positioning. I found that my bees didn't follow that pattern and preferred to build on one side of my hive that is next to my house. I believe the white siding makes that side of the hive warmer.
ReplyDeleteDid you ever Figure out if this worked or not?
ReplyDeleteI continue to use it - whether the bees are happier or not, I don't know. They do tend to build comb well, but whether it's Housel positioning or just a good nectar flow, I'm not sure. It helps to have a system for putting frames into the hives, so seven years later I still do it when I put drawn frames into a hive.
ReplyDelete