Musing about Frames: The Importance of the Tenth Nail, Sturdy Waxing, and the Availability of a Handy Toothpick

Lots of people purchase their frames pre-assembled.  I am not one of those people.  However, I am certainly rethinking this - it takes me 50 minutes to nail together 10 frames using a jig - not very fast, although the jig really helps.  The jig is set up for 10 frames, so when I went through the process three times, I've completed enough for three boxes (but since I use 8 frame boxes, I actually almost have enough for four!)  Waxing frames in takes time too.  This morning I spent one hour cutting and waxing strips into about 50 frames.

Constructing a frame takes 10 nails.

Are you listening, those of you who only bothered to use eight nails?

The tenth nail is the hardest to drive in and makes me say, "*#^#$^)%(#$)," almost every time  However, it is by far the most important nail.  That nail and glue make all the difference in frames that can stand up over time.  The tenth nail is the one that takes me the longest.  I can hammer all eight into 10 frames in 30 minutes.  Then it takes me 20 more minutes to hammer in that $(*)@#*$**^ ( tenth nail into either end bar of 10 frames.

If you don't hammer in the tenth nail (or use glue), the sight below is one you might see.  This is a medium box of honey, but I won't be able to harvest the second frame.  The top bar has become unattached from the end bar and I won't be able to get it out of the box.   This is a frame from 2007, so it is in its fifth year of use (new comb every year), but the parts are wearing out and maybe I skipped the 10th nail at least on this end of the frame.

The frames for the hives at Stonehurst don't have the tenth nail.  I am not in charge of constructing the hive parts over there. I picked up the constructed frames the other day and brought them home to wax in strips.  When I noticed the lack of the 10th nail, I suppose I could have nailed it into place.  It's my nemesis however, so instead  I've decided that if one of the frames over there comes apart like the one above, I'm simply skipping it in the harvest.  And if we order any more frames for Stonehurst, I'll do a better job of educating the guy who is building the hive parts.

When I've given talks about using foundation less frames, I've had beekeepers I respect tell me that they have had strips fall out of frames in Hotlanta weather.  That has never happened to me.  I wonder if perhaps those beekeepers are not waxing in the strips well.

When I put a wax strip into a frame, I run the wax tube fastener up one side of the strip.  Then I turn the frame and run the wax tube fastener up the other side.  When I'm done it's well waxed in and I can't imagine it falling out.

Here's where the handy toothpick comes in (you were wondering, weren't you?).  Sometimes the wax tube fastener looks like it is releasing wax when it isn't really.  Then I take a handy toothpick and unplug the hole in the handle.  Wax flows out easily then and I can make sure the wax strip is being secured on both sides.

One thing I've noticed in using frames from previous years when I have cut out the old comb:  If the old comb I cut out was crooked cross comb, then the bees with the now empty frame, follow the old cell lines and build crooked comb again....even with just a one cell depth of wax left on the frame.

Going forward when I cut out cross comb, I am going to use hot water to melt the old crooked lines off of the top bar and insert a new wax strip.  I may have to put such old frames into a boiling water bath so that the bees, in trying to color between the lines, crooked though they may be, won't have the old lines to use.

Note:  There's a video on this site about how to build a frame.

Big Bee Day - Part One Rabun County

I drove up to Rabun County in the pouring rain yesterday, planning to visit the bees and inspect the hive. Last time I was there on August 8, they were angry and had a field day with me (no smoker, only a jacket).

Although it poured all day yesterday, today the sun broke out and I broke out my Golden Bee suit - no stings for me (it's almost impossible to get stung in the Golden Bee suit). Fully prepared with smoker, Golden Bee suit, and curiosity, I opened the hive at the community garden this morning.

The hive is full of bees. Box one is mostly brood. Box two is mostly honey. Box three is comb and little else. There were no hive beetles, the bees looked healthy (no DWV, no sign of varroa mites), and there are still a few drones in the hive.



At EAS Billy Davis really advocated using hive drapes, so I brought flour sack towels that I buy from Walmart to cover the boxes. These towels are all cotton, light, and lint free. Using them I'm not likely to leave any reminder of the towel behind in the hive and the bees won't get caught in the material as they might in terry cloth. This accomplishes two things: it disturbs the bees less because the box is not suddenly exposed to the bright light of the sun and it keeps the hive from advertising its honey stores to any potential marauding bees from other hives.



I am dying to see what their honey tastes like since I've only gotten honey from my backyard bees in Atlanta. These bees can get nectar from sourwood and from kudzu neither of which is available to my Atlanta bees. So I took two frames of honey from box two and replaced them with drawn wax from a box in Atlanta.

This hive had great stores of pollen as you can see in the picture below.



Also the queen has been hard at work as you can see in the brood below. I think the picture below is upside down, but the brood is still visible to your in the cells either way! The larvae look healthy as do the bees in this hive where I have never seen the queen.



The two frames I took were frames of drawn wax from last year that I had put in the hive. I brought it home to crush and strain. This is the first time I have tried crushing wax that isn't brand new. It wasn't easy. Actually there were two problems. I couldn't find my pestles and remembered that someone had suggested on this blog that I use a potato masher.

The two problems were that the comb was old and the potato masher really didn't work well. The comb got all smashed into the holes in the potato masher and it was completely gunky in minutes. I ended up smashing the comb with the insert for my Cuisinart! It was the shape of the pestle and solid on the bottom which was the problem with the potato masher (it wasn't).

One of the frames I brought back had popsicle sticks as starter strips rather than wax.  The cut popsicle stick showed up in the crushed wax and at first I had no idea why wood was in the honey.  Then I realized what it was!

I let the crushed honey drain all afternoon and the wax at the end of the day looked like this:

Because it was old wax, the crushed wax looks dark and stiff, unlike new wax that I usually see.

Then I tasted the honey - WOW - it tastes a little like grape which means that there is definitely some kudzu in the honey.  It's only a small bit - maybe six pounds if I'm lucky - but I am thrilled to get it.

Working on the Top Bar Hive

In the last week, I've done a lot of work on the top bar hive. I shortened the follower boards (they were about an inch too long). I set the hive up on newspapers in my carport and painted it green. I was going to use yellow, but my son-in-law who is a Georgia fan did not want a hive that looked like Ga Tech in his backyard!



I used paint that was a reject for my dining room and I think the hive looks perfectly lovely! I still need to staple the screened bottom on and will do that next week.




Inside at odd moments while on the phone I have managed to glue the "woodies" into the slots on the top bars. These will serve as starter strips for the bees when they begin to draw wax. I found these "woodies" at Michaels. They are smaller than popsicle sticks and fit into the slot from the circular saw better than the popsicle sticks.



So now all I need is a swarm and the top bar hive will be in business! 

I just found out about a resource:  www.findabeekeeper.com where people can search for someone to collect swarms from their property.  I listed myself there.  Maybe between being on Cindy Bee's swarm list for Metro and being listed on Bud's site, I might get a call and fill this hive!

Mellona and Bermuda

These two hives are my standby strong ones. Mellona is entering her second winter. Bermuda is entering her third. She has barely made it through both of her winters, but perhaps this one will be the best one yet.

I've been worrying a little about Mellona. She has always looked weaker than Bermuda - less bees on the front porch and always looks a little on the low numbers side. Today there was brood everywhere - capped cells and brood in all stages of development.



On this frame you can see five emerging workers - they're the bees coming out of the cells face forward. The nurse bees are going into the cells headfirst!



In the picture below you can see larvae in all stages of development.



I was tired and needing to shower and go to work when I got to Bermuda so I only took this picture. The brood is obviously still in process - so that's good. I noticed in Bermuda there are two boxes each of which had half of its frames filled with honey and the other half empty. On my next inspection I'll combine the two boxes.

The combination will be a little problematic because one of the boxes is a medium and the other is a shallow....this is the argument for using all the same sized boxes. I had to put a box on in a hurry when I was on my way out of town and grabbed a shallow by mistake since all of its frames were there. But next time around I'll put the shallow frames in the medium box and hope for as little burr comb as possible!

I just noticed the stick in the bottom left of the frame. I believe this is a box that I started with popsicle sticks as starters and the stick must have fallen out of the slot and been incorporated by the bees into the wax comb!

Today's Inspection - Beautiful Capped Honey

Today in the 98 degree weather at the hottest part of the day (3 PM) I inspected my hives. I found a couple of interesting anomalies to share on this blog. In Persephone all of the frames were built out, but only in the front 2/3 of the frame. What do you think that is about? I'm going to post on Beemaster and I'll let you know what they say. It was the oddest thing.


When I opened Melissa, I was thrilled to find this pure white capped honey. Isn't that gorgeous? The super wasn't fully capped so I won't harvest it yet, but I was impressed with this new hive. Mellona does have a box of capped honey that I will remove this weekend. Some of it is pretty enough to cut into cut comb honey. The honey below needs a little more time to be fully capped. While the frame in the picture is capped, there were at least four or five that were not fully capped in this super.


I have been giving the bees starter strips of wax in the frames and in each box I put one full sheet of foundation. However, since these are honey supers, I am using thin surplus foundation that I ordered my first year to use in shallow supers. Since this is a medium super, the foundation isn't long enough to fill the frame.

To keep the bees from pushing the foundation sheet (which can't be attached to the bottom because it's too short) out at an angle, I always put a rubber band around the frame to keep the foundation in line. Most of the time after waxing it into the groove, I remove the rubber band before putting the frame into the hive.

I forgot to on this frame. See how the bees indented the comb to accommodate the rubber band!


Finally in inspecting all of my hives today, I only saw one small hive beetle. However, this year for the first time, I have silverfish - yuck. (Whoops! See comment below - it's an earwig.)

Inspection today

My goal today was to take the huge honeycomb off of Bermuda, but while I was all suited up, I checked in on each of the hives to see which one might need a new box. The Aristaeus2 hive just doesn't like popsicle sticks. If you look under my blue gloved finger, you can see that this frame had popsicle sticks as starters and instead of using them, the bees are building messy comb from the bottom.

I'm going to set some frames up with starter strips and give those to them instead.



The best growing hive was Melissa (located in my yard in bright sunshine). Fartherest from the camera is frame 4 and we are looking straight at frame 3. They drew these from starter strips.



Here you can see frames 4, 3, and 2 with 2 closest to the camera. True to typical bee form, they have most built out the frame closest to the center of the box and are working on the ones closer to the edge. I know you may be wondering if this is actually a top bar hive, but this is how bees build comb when allowed to do it in their own way. Eventually they will fill out the frame and often do not attach it to the bottom bar.



My favorite picture of the day is the one below. In Melissa, the bees were festooning in the top box as they draw out the wax. I pushed frame 7 over, creating a space between it and frame 8 and stretching this line of bees who were attached to each other "festooning" as they build wax in the frames.


I'll paint a new box for this hive and put it on tomorrow when I put the foundation-filled frames onto Bermuda to straighten out their wax making. I'll also give Aristaeus2 some foundation-filled frames to help get them on the right track as well.

Bee-ing with the Girl Scouts

Today I helped the Girl Scout troop in their first hive inspection. Before we inspected the hive, we got a set of frames ready for the super which we planned to add.

The girls nailed a wedge into this frame to hold a sheet of foundation. On the other frames they either glued popsicle sticks for starters or starter wax strips for the bees to use to get started building comb.


Sierra glues in the popsicle sticks.


Morgan gets the starter strips ready to be waxed into the frames.

Then we opened their hive to find that the queen is laying a lovely football shaped pattern just like one would ideally wish for. They had two purposes for their inspection: To see if the queen had laid eggs and to see if the bottom box had been fully built out.

They were able to see young brood. We didn't see eggs but saw very young brood (tiny c-larvae) so we know the queen is active and doing well. The bottom box was 90% built out. They had already put a second brood box on top of the first one and after I left, I thought perhaps we should have removed it....but we'll see how they do going forward.

Since it's the height of honey flow in Atlanta, we added the honey super that they had prepared to their hive.

Hive Inspection - Interesting notes

I forgot to report on the queen in the queen cage. She was introduced and four days later the candy had been all eaten and the queen had been released. I took the empty cage out of the hive and closed it up.

Today I am back home after being gone for a week. I wanted to check on my hives to see how the empty boxes were faring.

In the first swarm hive, the bees were drawing comb in the starter strip frames, but not too rapidly. This is how the comb looks when they first get started with it. Gradually they fill the frame - often starting with three sections like this one.



In the second swarm hive, in spite of having a new box above the brood chamber, they had built burr comb on the tops of the brood frames. I scraped it off and tried to line up the frames in the second box to match the one below. I find that the 8 frame boxes are not as tight as the 10 frame ones and it is easy for frames not to be in line.

Interestingly in this hive and one other, the new wax, instead of being clean white was bright yellow. I didn't take a picture in this hive but did in Mellona. There was good brood and eggs in this hive which is building up well.



Here is some of the new yellow comb from Mellona - quite pretty and I wonder why it isn't white. Usually comb darkens or discolors when the bees walk over, leaving footprints as it were. Maybe there's lots of yellow pollen out there to stick to their little feet!

The worse part of this inspection day was that the queen released hive shows no sign of having a queen. There was not a queen sighting and no brood or eggs. There was a queen cell that had been ripped open, implying that a queen at least had been present, but if she is, she's a virgin and not laying yet and the queen I got from PN was supposed to be mated.

So I added another frame of brood and eggs from Mellona to this hive. If they don't make a queen and don't get going, I'm going to combine them with another hive. There are tons of bees in this hive and they deserve leadership.

I thought I'd post this picture. In the hive below, I had used a rubber band to hold the one foundation piece I had put in their new hive box. After the bees started drawing the comb, they cut the rubber band and dragged it out the door! You can see the red rubber band on the entry way.

Well, this post has been a hodge-podge of interesting bee stuff. I'll try to focus more the next time!

Much Activity in the Hives

Today the man who supplied my nucs called to say that my queen may arrive tomorrow afternoon. If she does, I'll need to pick her up and essentially take her straight to my hives and establish her presence there. He said she would be in a container with no attendants.

So on the way to work tomorrow, I will be stopping at the hardware store to purchase #8 hardware cloth to make a push-in queen cage. I've been to two lectures on how to do this - one at Young Harris last year and one at my bee club this year - but I've never done this myself.

Actually I've never introduced a queen. I've ordered nucs that already had a queen in them and I've given hives frames of eggs to make their own queen, but I've never ordered and then introduced the queen to the hive. So this will be yet another first in my life as a beekeeper.

In addition my hives are going really well right now. I checked Bermuda this morning and they are slow to work on the top box. I am thinking that they probably swarmed when I wasn't home. They are acting like a hive rebuilding rather than a hive that is moving into honey production. Mellona is doing great and today I added a honey super.

The small swarm from the Dunwoody yard has not been opened because I suspected that it has a virgin queen who had to be mated and return to the hive. I opened the top of that hive today to see how it's going in there and they seemed angry. I am wondering if they are in fact queenless. I did give them a frame of brood and eggs a week after they arrived, but I'm not sure they have made a queen. They had built out all of the frames in the boxes they had so I added a third box.

Tonight I built frames and waxed in starter strips of foundation. I expect that before the weekend at least two more hives will need more growing space and probably Bermuda will need a honey super (cross your fingers).

A Sad Tale of Shattered Wax

When the trick-or-treaters had gone on Halloween, I was left with a lot of candy. Well, that's not exactly true. I live in a neighborhood of 80 year old people and there are very few children....so I never get any trick-or-treaters on Halloween, but I always buy a bag of Three Musketeers, just in case this is the year when someone actually says "Trick or Treat!" at my door.

Sadly, this year was no different - no kids in costume knocked at my door. To keep from eating the candy, I took it to my downstairs refrigerator to freeze it. When I opened the upper door to the freezer compartment, a practically unused box of 7/11 foundation, stored in the freezer, crashed to the floor and broke into shards of wax.

The bees made beautiful comb from this wax last year and I made boxed and cut comb honey from it. Now it's all in pieces.

I guess I have several choices. I could save the shards and put partial strips in honey supers next year so the bees could get a start at drawing the beautiful wax for cut comb boxes. I could melt it all into candles.

Lesson learned: Don't store foundation in the freezer.

I should know this. I overnighted some comb-filled frames in the chest freezer to kill wax moths and dropped one when I took it out. That comb also shattered into pieces of wax.

Making and Boxing Cut Comb Honey

Today I took a super of honey off of my Bermuda hive with the plan to cut comb and box it in plastic boxes. I've never done this before so I didn't make a movie but instead I made a slide show. Maybe I'll make a video of it next year!

I learned a lot doing this harvest method.

1. I had a difficult time cutting the comb and not dripping the frame onto previously cut squares of comb. I finally figured out that to help with this problem, I needed to lay the frame of comb on top of the draining rack. Then cut the squares all out at once before moving the frame.

2. My bees made all of their comb from starter strips this year. Sometimes they didn't make straight lines of cells and my comb isn't as pretty as it might have been. I appreciate their hard work, however. Next year I might look for the straightest lines of cells in choosing frames for this process.

3. I have another hive, Mellona, that produced some gorgeous comb, but I kept waiting for them to fully cap all the frames in the super before harvesting it. It took them so long that when I harvested that super I had to use crush and strain as a harvest method because there were too many travel stains on what had been gorgeous white comb. Next year I may harvest frame by frame for cut comb, rather than wait for the entire super to be ready.

4. On the Internet forums, I was advised to use a serrated knife. I didn't because I have a wonderfully sharp Victorinox knife with a really thin blade that went through the comb like butter. If you try this at home, however, you may want to use a steak knife with a serrated blade. I cut on the inside of the cutter to make sure the squares actually fit into the 4" boxes.

5. I bought these plastic boxes from Brushy Mountain. They snap shut but not really tightly. I think if I do this again, I'll find a different container. When I take these out of the freezer and label them, I'll probably use tape to keep the box securely closed.

The slide show should start automatically. If you want to see the pictures larger, then click on the picture and you should go to my Web Album where you can see the pictures more easily.



From the eight frames that I harvested, I got about 26 pounds of honey product (since comb is included in cut comb and chunk). This brings my harvest this year to approximately 103 pounds of honey from 32 frames or about 3.2 pounds per frame. That isn't a particularly useful statistic since some of the frames were mediums and some shallow.

Note:  (added 2011)  I learned an improved system posted after this was made.  You can read about the changes here.

My Cells are Getting Smaller!

My one hive that made it through the winter, Bermuda, had moved into a medium box full of LC honeycomb. The picture on the right is Bermuda as it looks today.

The bees in Bermuda were weak and sickly from a varroa infested winter. I used sugar shakes and treated them with low expectations about growth or honey to help them build their strength slowly. Their queen is a 2006 queen and was still alive and laying well.

As they got stronger I added the next box that you see in the picture with only SC starter strips. When they had drawn out that comb, then I added a third box with SC starter strips.

These bees are thriving and doing great. I don't expect any honey from them this year, as they are doing well to have built up their numbers and collect enough honey for themselves.

Today I found on the Organic Beekeepers Yahoo Group site a file with a measuring tool for determining how small your cells are. You may not be able to access the file without being a member of the group, so some of you may not be able to click on the link above.

Anyway, the tool prints out a ruler of various decreasing cell sizes so that you can see
how your regression is going. I printed it out as per instructions from the author, Michelle Barry, and covered it with clear contact paper (again as per her instructions). I then took it with me to the hives today to try it out.

I only checked one small part of one frame because I didn't want to disrupt the hives too much today - I had opened them on Saturday for a big inspection.

My glove is covering up the measurement and the picture is out of focus (I was too excited to give the camera time to focus!), but the cells on the side of this frame are measuring 5.2, considerably smaller than 5.9 - and that's on the edge of the frame.

I think my girls are adapting well to the small cells. I only measured this one place to see how to use the tool, but I'm looking forward to using it again when I go into the hives
again (which won't happen now for about 10 days).


It's funny to me that the bees in my hives look smaller but the drones look monstrously big!

Weak Hive is doing FINE!

I checked the brood box in the weak hive, Bermuda, today. I saw the queen, dutifully laying eggs. The first picture shows her brood pattern. She has laid brood in six or seven of the frames in good patterns. The outer two frames in this hive are filled with capped honey and pollen. I think for a queen with her work cut out for her, she has done quite well. I had put one SC starter strip frame in the number 2 position in the bottom box and they were festooning on it when I opened the box. In addition, the bee numbers are increasing and they are moving up into the medium above the medium brood box.

In the second medium, they are just starting to draw out the starter strips. There is a filled frame in the center with small cell foundation. They had drawn it out and filled the cells with uncapped honey. They were just starting on the rest of the essentially empty frames. I'm no longer worried about Bermuda. This hive may not produce honey for me this year, but they'll do fine for themselves.

















Next I went to Mellona and went into the brood box there. The girls had drawn out all the frames very straight and gorgeous. The frame in this picture is in the #2 position and you can see brood at the bottom and the edges and capped honey on the top area of the frame.

















I pulled this frame out of the second box, a medium. They've drawn this comb out rather well and you can see some capped brood at the bottom. They have a ways to go in this box, however, with only six frames drawn out. The last four frames all had festooning bees, making wax, however. I was pleased.

















Finally I opened Proteus, the crazy comb hive. They had straightened out most of the comb. I still cut a little that was bulging over toward the next frame. I checked the bottom brood box in this hive and they had beautiful comb and good brood in all stages. The bees with the starter strips in this hive tend to build comb in two dips off of the top of the frame. I guess they'll fill in the center later?

















I did this inspection today especially to see if Bermuda still had a queen and if she were laying well. I am pleased and will not go into the brood box on any hive now for several weeks, unless I have reason to suspect a problem. All three looked good and were doing fine with the starter strips, albeit a little dippy sometimes.

For the next few weeks, I'll open each hive about once a week, but only to look to see if they need a new super for the honey flow.

It's funny - last year I inspected the hives because I thought I was supposed to and usually didn't have a real goal. This year my goals every time are clear. I now have a new camera and will be learning to use it before my next post.