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I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

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I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

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Friday, May 26, 2006

Housel positioning for the honey super

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 Posted by Picasa

3 comments:

  1. 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.

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  2. Did you ever Figure out if this worked or not?

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  3. I 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.

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