Frames

[Finman]

I do not use glue. I have made myself frame parts, and they did not had good joints, but stil they worked as good as something else.

When I put foundation in the frame, I look, that frame pieces are in right angle. If not, I do a little correction.

Then I give 1000 W electrict circuit through wire, and wire will go inside wax.  After that nothing in the frame will change place. I have done this 42 years. Every my frame. Just now I have about 1000 frames.

Melting the wax foundation serves as glue


Every extra piece of work must be 1000 multiplied.  

If frame is a little bit twinted sideways, it will finf it's final position in the hive. Wood "live" in the moisture of hive.

[Robo]

All good advice, but when you nail your frames, put a nail through each side bar into the top bar horizontally.  This adds great strength to the frame.  When you are pulling out a heavy, honey loaded frame by the top bar, the force applied is actually pulling the nails out of the end bars.   With the horizontal nail, the force is perpendicular.  Hope this makes sense.

Nothing worse than pulling out a fram and all you get is the top bar.  Don't under estimate the strength of propolis and cross comb.

[Anonymous]

The frames in this hive had only one nail in the top bar and one in the bottom bar.
If there would have been a few more nails we could have just cut between the frames and pulled them. As it was all the top bars came out so I then removed the bottom bars then tied the comb into new frames.


  Yes the girls we took out of this mess are still living.


  When you keep bees as a hobbie then take some time to add the extras. I can see skipping the glue and a couple of nails if you were trying to make a living from keeping bees.
  Al

[Lesli]

Finman asked what sort of wood. Pine. Eastern, Western, white---I've seen all of these. All are a soft wood.

I've had one frame split at the nail, but only one out of about 150, and some of that might be my own poor nailing technique. I was told at my beeclub that nailing and gluing was overdoing it, but hey, I have the time, can't hurt, might help.[/quote]