Almost as soon as I started beekeeping I started experimenting with working with frames in an almost foundationless way, and this summer I made an experiment build two kinds of frames from scratch to see what happens.
Test number 1
I built frames 22 mm wide, when the standard for my kind of hive is 25 mm wide. I used the same number of frames so the gap between each frame was increase to 8 mm instead of 5. The first test was a failure. The increased gap between the frames and the lack of a starter strip made de bees wanna build from the bottom up which left a chaotic mess.
Test number 2
These I build 25 mm wide, with a starter strip. The bees did start to build them from the top and they look to be a lot better. Still not as good as when using a foundation, but I think this might be good enough for me.
Honey Extraction of 22 mm
This worked fine! About half of the honeycombs I had to ground to extract the honey, but the other half could be harvested in my rotating honey extractor.
Music:
Performer: My father, Bo Lundberg
Songs: Dalmarsch, På Stormyren.
