Foundationless Brood Chambers so Go With Foundationless Supers?

[ScooterTrash]

Beginning with 6 colonies in 11 frame (foundationless) medium Langstroth brood chambers on 20120414. As of today one hive built out with one medium 11frames 3/4 full & one medium 3 frames 3/4 full, 3 hives with 1 medium each 11frames 3/4 full (I have added another brood chamber to each of these 3) & 2 hives with 1 medium 4frames 3/4 full (these 2 had gone AWOL, I believe, to the now more populated hive).

The question; if following the natural approach would one also continue with foundationless 11frame supers once one gets 3 medium brood chambers are built out at least 3/4? New here & experimenting and hoping just to get 3 medium brood chambers 3/4 full for each colony and a super each for their groceries this winter. Thanks

[Vance G]

I remember blowing up medium brood wax that was wired the first year it was drawn.  I can imagine foundationless might be pretty fragile.  Run that extractor slow is my advice.

[ScooterTrash]

No plan to extract, comb/crush & strain as appropriate; at least at this point.

[Michael Bush]

>I remember blowing up medium brood wax that was wired the first year it was drawn.  I can imagine foundationless might be pretty fragile.

As you pointed out, all new wax is fragile.  If you're gentle it's no harder to extract foundationless.

[ScooterTrash]

And back to the initial question:

The question; if following the natural approach would one also continue with foundationless 11frame supers once one gets 3 medium brood chambers built out at least 3/4 (comb drawn in brood chambers)? New here & experimenting and hoping just to get 3 medium brood chambers 3/4 full for each colony and a super each for their groceries this winter. Thanks

[Nate]

Scooter, that's completely up to you at this point.  You can easily stay foundationless in all of your boxes, as that is what I do.  You could wire the frames, or use foundation is you wanted to. 

[BrentX]

My hives are completely foundation less.  When I add a super I typically trade a few drawn frames into the new super to help guide the build out of the new frames. 

[Michael Bush]

I would continue with foundationless.  You may find you need to space them wider for honey to get them to build in the frames and not make them too thick for the space available.

[tillie]

I use foundationless in all my boxes.  In the honey supers, the bees always attach the wax on all four sides.  While they don't attach the bottom of the wax in brood frames, I've never pulled out a honey frame when the honey is capped that it isn't attached on all four sides.  I don't use an extractor, but if I did, I would have no hesitation putting a fully capped, fully attached honey frame into one....how's it any different from a frame on plastic foundation at that point?

Interestingly in foundationless brood frames, the bees often leave holes for passage between frames, something they can't do in plastic foundation.

Linda T in Atlanta

[Lone]

Interestingly in foundationless brood frames, the bees often leave holes for passage between frames, something they can't do in plastic foundation.

Linda, the plastic foundations I use have a hole in each corner for passage to the other side of the frame.  When I was looking for the queen on frames with wax foundation, there was a gap at the bottom nearly the length of the frame the queen was on, a lot of bees and I couldn't catch her with such easy access to the other side.

Scooter, sorry, I haven't used foundationless so I can't advise you except to say that often there will be cause to change frames from the brood to the honey super and vice versa, so you will end up with the frames jumbled anyway.

Lone

[Joe D]

Scooter, I would say yes to your question.  You can go 11, 10, or 9 frames in supers, which ever you want.  And for them this winter I would like to have 2 supers for stores, just me but I like not having to mix sugar syrup or what ever you may have to feed. Last winter I had 3 hives and mixed 1 gal per hive over the winter, was a warm winter, what stores they didn't use then they did when they started the spring build up.  Mine are mostly foundationless also.  Good luck.

Joe