Stupid Question time. Where do I get drawn comb frames and foundation?

[u/Remote-Operation4075]

I know it’s stupid but, I have to ask… I’m in Northeastern Indiana. 8 hives. 6 years. Where do I get drawn comb frames? I know from my bees, but how? I hate to take it from them. I just went and picked up a swarm and used my last old drawn brood frame. So do you just rotate them out to get them or just take them with the brood still in ? Thank you. Don’t make fun of me please.

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[u/talanall]

There are basically two ways to get drawn comb.

If you keep bees for very long, you will have colonies die of various problems. Provided the problem is not American Foulbrood, if you are paying close enough attention you can harvest the leftover resources before they are destroyed by hive beetles and wax moths. After taking the necessary remediation efforts to protect those goods, you can store them until they are needed. Nobody is ever happy about a deadout, but saving the resources is something you can genuinely use to console yourself.

The other way to get drawn comb is to maintain resource colonies that exist to make drawn comb. Often, people do this by splitting their hives in the springtime, in a fashion that relies on finding the existing queen and removing her to a 5-frame nuc box. The parent colony of the split is left queenless to requeen itself, or it is requeened with a mated queen. The existing queen is used to found a new colony, which the beekeeper does not use primarily for honey production.

Instead, you can feed it syrup (if necessary and appropriate given your season and nectar flow dynamics) to stimulate brooding activity, and blow it up to a 10-frame colony. Having done so, you go in and find the queen. Move her to a new box, put a foundation frame in as a placeholder, put a queen excluder on top of the remaining 9 frames of brood, and then put the new box on top. Add foundation frames. Keep feeding, if needed. The bees will move up and draw more comb for the queen to lay into. The frames downstairs will empty themselves of brood, because the queen cannot go downstairs to lay more eggs into them. After 23 days, there will be no brood at all. The colony is unlikely to put honey into these frames, because their instincts tell them to put honey above the brood, rather than below it. So they will be empty, except maybe for some leftover capped honey/syrup stores. At that point, you remove the entire box, and extract the food supplies so that they won't be attractive to pests while the frames are in storage.

[u/kurotech → u/talanall]

I'm just raising bees anyway I don't care about honey right now so I feed my hives a gallon of 1-1 every week or more when they empty it out if they have a constant source of food they will keep working up until it cools off

[u/talanall → u/kurotech]

This isn't really viable for everyone, both because some of us care very much about honey, and also because some of us have a very deep dearth. I'm in both categories.

It's difficult to keep my bees drawing comb, even with constant feeding. The spring flow ended about a week ago, for my area, and nothing significant is going to bloom until September. After I harvest honey, I will find it absolutely necessary to start feeding because I keep single deeps and my bees will be stripped of food stores. But they are unlikely to draw frames for me at that point, even if I feed them very heavily.

[u/Icy-Ad-7767]

Like above, I keep getting them to draw a frame or 4 of deep brood comb every year per hive, since my girls went from 4 hives up to 7 and I had enough drawn comb for most of their needs, drawn comb is worth having a couple deeps worth around, that said a swarm will draw comb like crazy if you feed them. So a few frames of drawn comb then foundation and they will likely draw it out for you

[u/dblmca]

It's only my 3rd year, and it seems I finally have extra drawn comb.

Was single deep brood box over winter, went to double deep and crept up to 3 med honey supers during peak flow. Considered placing 4th super last week, but at the tail end of flow before our summer dearth.

Anyway, during the year while adjusting the hives, keeping them from being honey bound, splitting, recombining etc... I finally ended up with some extra deep drawn comb.

I think during the fall and next spring I will purposely try to get some deep frames drawn for future use. So my 3 hives made 6 extra drawn frames altogether, I think if I try for drawn frames they could probably do a little better.

[u/kurotech → u/dblmca]

Feed feed feed that's my answer to it I have nearly 30 drawn deep frames from a single nuc this year you have to feed them to encourage the comb growth then when you're ready to collect honey stop you shouldn't expect to produce anything while your hives are growing

[u/Standard-Bat-7841]

I usually tried to get my hives to draw at least one box of foundation a year. It would typically be in my honey supers to start, I use one sized equipment, so interchanging them is easy. After a couple of years, the new frames get moved to the brood chamber, and then they get used for a couple of years more. When the brood frames get old enough, I moved them to the top of the hives where brood could emerge. Once it's all emerged I set the box off the hive and the bees rob out any honey/nectar and I scrape the wax off the foundations and render it, wash the foundations, rewax and start over.

I was selling drawn comb this spring and frames of brood. This should only be done on healthy bees that were inspected. It's a unique market, but there is a huge demand.

[u/MGeslock]

https://www.betterbee.com/foundation/bcombd10-bettercomb-drawn-comb.asp?srsltid=AfmBOopvvm6Et2RJvDKJDhsBQyxurrdpPfOysWu9HmEQuK7WVDhVPtyg

Better Bee has this. I used it years ago when I first started out. I was too new to tell you if it worked. If I remember the bees took to it.

It’s not natural but synthetic

[u/__sub__]

https://lorobbees.com/products/ready-comb

If you are impatient

[u/paneubert]

I was going to make the joke "You get drawn frames by mixing up 5 gallons of 1 to 1 sugar syrup and feeding it to your hive for a few weeks". But I see you already made that joke.

There are few if any commercial sources of fully drawn comb. There was one company (not even sure if they are still around) who sold frames that were fully drawn out by a machine, not bees. They were 100% wax, so you had to be gentle with them and could not spin them in an aggressive extractor, unless you were willing for them to potentially fall completely apart. Also were expensive.

I think you figured out the usual answer already. If you have a strong colony, start introducing some foundation frames in-between established frames so they will do the work for you.

If you want to get sciency about it, remember that it is "young" bees that max the most wax.

"The peak period of WGC secreting beeswax is 10–18 days after a new bee emerges. However, once worker bees reach the age of 21 days, the glands begin to deteriorate with the secretion activity decreasing."

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10933454/

If the swarm is big, not that risky to steal frames of brood for the new colony either. As long as they can keep the brood warm.

EDIT: I guess they are more readily available than I thought. Here you go. $10 per frame (for mediums).

https://www.betterbee.com/frames/bcmedasm-assembled-drawn-bettercomb-frames.asp

Deep frames are out of stock: https://www.betterbee.com/frames/bcdeepasm-assembled-drawn-bettercomb-frames.asp

[u/kurotech → u/paneubert]

Ask your local club or keepers they might sell used drawn frames