- Hi there! We're going to talk about drawing comb. That's the process of bees adding comb, beeswax
comb, to the foundation we provide them in our frames. For bees to draw comb out, they need an intense
nectar flow but we can simulate that with feeding as we've done in this situation. Two weeks ago, we installed this nucleus colony,
four frames of bees, into a brand new hive. New beekeepers are at a significant disadvantage
with those brand new beehives because there is no comb for the bees to expand into. That's a bit of a hurdle to get over when
you first get into beekeeping. When you buy a nucleus colony, all the comb
they have are on those four frames. If you have package bees, where people use
those, you'd be starting off with no comb at all. We're gonna talk through that process, I'll
set the nuc out of the way here. We've put this feeder on two weeks ago, and
we've put a gallon and a half, two gallons, of sugar syrup inside that feeder right at
the time we installed the nucleus colony. Just pry that off and there you can see how
the bees are doing. There's inside the feeder and you can see
that it's quite empty. They've taken that all down. They build a lot of, some excess bees wax
and when I look down between the frames I can see some nice white cappings wax. When beeswax is first produced by the bees,
it's a pure white color. It gets travel stained from bees walking over
it so it grows more of a yellow color over time. But let's start, we'll pry that second frame
out here, lift that up slowly and carefully, and they haven't done anything on this side. But the frame is quite heavy because they
have completely built the comb on this side. We can see that beautiful white beeswax there
and all the perfect comb that they built. It's nice and flat which is exactly what we
we're looking for. And what do we have inside of here? A bit of pollen, nectar, and some sealed honey. So that's a thing of beauty. We'll move over here, take this frame out,
lots more brand new comb on there. They've been able to raise brood and cap it
over within that two week period so they obviously got right on it and built this comb right
away. The queen got laying on it and we've already
got a beautiful patter of capped brood on that new frame. The cappings when you have new comb like this
are a light color. On darker comb, it's a darker color because
bees move beeswax around and everything takes on a different hue. On this side of the frame, we've got some
cappings up here and then in this area here we have eggs and larvae all through here. Without the comb on this surface the queen
would have not had that room to lay. For the first week after we installed the
nuc we had cold weather and they would not have built any comb at all so it was a really
good thing that we had that feed on. We've since had a good week of weather, it's
been some nectar coming in but we're going to carry on and feed this colony a little
bit more to try and make sure they draw the comb out all the way across. This frame here has no foundation or no comb
built on it at all. Just looking down in here I can see that these
two frames don't have any comb built on them either. So we're going to feed them more, if we super
the hive before they draw out these outside combs they just kind of abandon them and they
move up and they never draw those out so the hive would be at a disadvantage going into
the winter. We'll close it back up, get the frames back
in the same orientation. Then we'll put the feeder on, and we'll put
on approximately two gallons of sugar syrup, pour that in there, pour some in here, and
just to let the bees know there's a little bit of syrup on top, we'll pour a little bit
down the middle and that will get them looking around to find that syrup. Then we close the hive up with the inner cover,
and the lid. We're going to leave that calling for about
a week now. We're back after a week, we are going to check
to see how the feed is doing at drawing comb out in the brood chambers. So we'll get the feeder out first, I can feel
there is no weight at all there so that syrup is down. And we'll have a look. Looks quite good there, looking down in I
can see more comb being built on these frames here than was there before. We'll pull a frame or two out and have a look. Oh there's a lot of weight there so they've
definitely got that sugar syrup stored away in the new combs they've been building. Lots of sugar syrup in here capped over, eggs
down in the open area here, beautifully drawn comb on this side, so we'll set that frame
aside and look at the very outside one. I doubt that they've got a lot on there. Huh, they do have one side, about three quarters
built and nothing on the other side. We're going to fix that. What we're going to do is we're going to put
this frame in now on the outside and I'll make sure to put the chunk of comb that had
eggs on it towards the middle of the box on this side and then we'll put our least drawn
comb towards the middle. They'll really want to get that comb there
for the queen to lay on so they'll draw that out pretty quickly. We've done that little switch around there
to help encourage them to draw it out. They don't really draw out the comb on the
very outside quickly and I want to speed things up a little bit. We've shifted that around so that outside
frame is now in this position. We're going to check the other side over here
yeah they've done even less on this side so there's nothing done there at all. We'll check on this one, quite heavy, lots
of comb, just a little bit of comb, so what we're going to do with that is set it aside
too. This one is completely drawn, full, full,
full of honey or sugar syrup honey. We're going to put that to the outside then
we're going to put our least drawn comb right here, get it over now close to where the bees
really want to build comb for the queen to lay eggs on. It's nice and warm right now so we don't need
to worry about splitting these, moving the frames over like that. We'll now put this sheet here towards that
and we've got the drawn side on the far side there we're just working that undrawn comb
over more towards the middle where they're going to be working on it. We're not going to feed them anymore. We're done with the feeding. We've got white dutch clovers in bloom now
and when that comes in bloom in our jurisdiction that means the start of a major nectar flow
is on. We've got some good warm weather, even some
hot weather in the forecast so we know that we're going to have a good nectar flow coming
along so we're going to give this hive the super and let them carry on building comb
on their own from there. We'll get some of those bees out of the way
so that when I put the queen excluder on we're not squishing them. Set our queen excluder on. I think that queen excluders are one of the
most valuable tools that a bee keeper can have. We can keep our brood comb separate from our
honey comb which is a really ideal thing to be doing. We've got a box now with brand new frames
in them that we're going to be putting on. Now when you're a new beekeeper and you're
dealing with a situation where you have no new comb, you pretty much have to put a full
super of foundation on the hive. You don't have drawn comb to work with. Later we'll show you what to do when you do
have a little bit of drawn comb and you want to get more done. We're going to let the bees do this, this
is actually a bees wax foundation in wooden frames, bees prefer that a little bit to the
plastic so we'll let them go to town, collect some nectar, and we'll come back later to
see how they're doing at building the comb out in the honey super. Here we are back, two and a half weeks later,
we've had some fantastic weather, lots of nectar coming in because it's been really
nice and warm and the plants are just gushing with nectar while it's nice and warm like
that. So let's see what the bees have done with
all that fresh nectar. We'll go down to the brood chamber first,
get the honey super out of the way, oh wow there's some weight there, that's great so
there's obviously comb full of honey in that one. Let's see what they've done with those foundation
frames that weren't drawn out last time. So we're going to look at this frame here
and that frame there, they had the least amount of comb on them. We'll pry this one out first. Just looking down in I can see that it's nicely
drawn out, very heavy so it's full. In looking at that frame, I see honey along
the top here, and this beautiful sheet of pupa with all that nice brown capping over
the top of that pupa there. Lots of new bees coming along there. Same thing on this side, more honey, a little
less pupa, and then just looking down in, I can see that this frame is completely drawn
out on both sides. Now we have a brood chamber full of comb available
for the bees to use for raising young and for their storing honey. Let's have a look at the honey super. Oh, awesome. There's lots of white comb, almost all the
way across, we're going to look at the middle frame first, when bees come up into the supers,
they work on the middle combs first, draw them out, and then they work their way in
either direction towards the sides. So that frame is full of comb, full of honey,
lots of weight to it there. This one I see is just the foundation so they
haven't yet got to building comb on that but we're going to move it over just like we did
in the brood chamber, so we'll shuffle that frame over, it's drawn, and this one's drawn,
full of honey. We're going to put that foundation frame in
there, so the bees don't comb on it right away. Looking at this frame on the outside, it's
already completely drawn so there's nothing to do on that side. We'll just leave it the way it is. This hive's ready for another super. We'll just grab the super same thing, all
foundation, I like to top super, to put the super on top of the already full one here,
rather than underneath. The reason for that is that lets the bees
completely finish this, cap this, ripen it, and so on before they move to another box
but we'll just keep adding more boxes as they need that for honey storage. So that's it for building comb for the first
year, once you get into subsequent years, we then have the comb that has been built
here, that we've extracted, so we have all this drawn comb and that gives us a bit of
an advantage because what we like to do is put foundations frames, brand new frames,
in between frames that are drawn out so we alternate that as we go across, this frame
has lots of, it's sticky from the honey that was left over from extracting, so it helps
draw bees up through an excluder, up into the honey super, and once they're up there,
the fact that there's comb on either side of the foundations means there's a little
less space in there so they build really good comb right on the foundation where we want
it. That helps with getting more comb built out
as we need to. Down in the brood chamber, we may periodically
need to be drawing out comb as well. If we're making up a split we need to add
more frames to go into the brood chamber, or if we're replacing old comb or broken frames,
we'd be putting foundation frames into the brood chamber. So what we do is put those in in the second
position here and then as the season progresses if they haven't drawn that comb out, just
like we did earlier, we'll shift those over more towards the middle to get the bees to
build the comb because where they want to raise brood they will definitely build comb. Once we've got our comb built, it's a real
asset for the beekeeper, these are just some methods that work for us, there are other
ways of doing this but we really like these methods here, I quite enjoy the process of
watching that comb being built, that beautiful pristine white wax and seeing the honey fill
that up, it's really rewarding to watch. Those of you who are new beekeepers, who are
just building your comb, I'm sure you're really going to enjoy that experience of watching
that being built. Thanks for watching, see you another time.
