Natural Comb

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Jonathan Getty

I like to give mu colonies the chance to make natural comb so that they can decide the cell size and the number of drones they want.

fishing-line-6-days

natural-comb-with-eggs

About Jonathan Getty

Jonathan Getty is a member of the Belfast & District branch of the Ulster Beekeepers Association and is at least a fourth generation beekeeper in the Getty family. His main beekeeping interest is queen rearing based on our native bee Apis mellifera mellifera. He started up the Belfast Minnowburn queenrearing group several years ago and it now has about 50 active members. He also manages about 30-40 colonies of his own. Jonathan holds a BSc Hons in Psychology from Queens University Belfast and gained a postgraduate teaching qualification at Stranmillis Training College. He is a fluent Spanish speaker.
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3 Responses to Natural Comb

  1. Phil says:
    May 17, 2015 at 5:14 pm

    Could you please tell me. Do you give bees a strip of foundation to enable them to draw their own comb in a standard brood frame, do they draw it out perpendicular to allow movement of frames.

    Many thanks

    Phil

    Reply
    • Jonathan Getty says:
      May 17, 2015 at 5:28 pm

      You don’t need to use starter strip. The trick is to put the frame to be drawn out between two frames already drawn out which acts as a guide. You need to make sure the hive is level.

      Reply
  2. Phil says:
    May 17, 2015 at 6:40 pm

    Thanks Jon, very much appreciated.

    Regards
    Phil

    Reply

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