I stopped buying wax foundation years ago. Too expensive. Easier to just rip a piece of scrap into strips and coat it with wax, or (better yet) use reclaimed burr comb to create a starter strip. Most of the time, I'll just run heavy pound test fishing string horizontally across the frame and bees will build it out beautifully. I found best success comes by inserting a foundation-less frame right between two frames of capped brood. Those newly emerged bees will draw it out lickity split, LOL. Great narration. You have great content. Thanks for sharing. ✌️🐝🐝🐝
Those work great dropped in between brood if needing come built, they build it quick because they don't like the gap between brood. But I also use 30lb. Fishing string criss-cross for stability
Depends on the extractor. Mine has a bit of a cage, and you can add cages. I actually use plastic for my honey supers, and foundationless for my brood chambers. You can extract them if you're careful. Basically, you put them in the extractor, spin on low speed to spin out about half of the honey on one side, flip it, spin out half again, then flip again to get the rest, and then flip one last time. It's a pain, but the reason you have blow out is the weight of the honey on the inside side of the comb pushes through at high centrifugal force. I've found that in the spring, that foundationless comb produces a lot of drone comb. Swarms don't usually make as many drones so I try to get my swarm captures to draw my comb for me. I also will come in and cut out the drone comb in the later summer when not as many drones are needed by the hive. Usually the first 1 or 2 inches will be worker, then the rest can be drone, and you can cut horizontal across and many times get them to draw more worker cells.
Do you know it takes 7 times the nectar to make a pound of wax as it takes to make a pound of honey. Drawn wax is gold. We have been eating out of Tupperware for 50 years now.
i did know that. I try to save every bit I get. That's one of the reasons I built the steam wax extractor. Gets me every drop. Even these frames, once they're to the point the bees can't use them, they go into the steam extractor and it starts all over again.
