Partial Foundation Frames

Lauri Miller from Miller Compound Honey Bees and Agriculture  uses and promotes partial sheets of plastic foundation in her hives, and while we've had good success with foundationless frames, we wanted to try her approach with partial foundation to see how the frames stand up in the radial extractor.  Benefits to partial foundation frames include:

• Save money (instead of using a whole foundation sheet per frame)
• The outer parts of the frame can be used for cut comb
• Allows your colony to produce drone comb, without potentially sacrificing an entire frame to drones
• Wax is reinforced on bouncy roads and in the extractor (versus an entirely foundationless frame)
• Allows for the removal of drone comb if someone is using that as a mite-management practice (drone comb also makes a great chicken treat!)​

We had a good year building our new colonies on the fireweed nectar flow, and decided to give this easy equipment modification a try.  

A new foundationless frame being built on the fireweed nectar flow. Foundationless frames require a little extra care and attention, but we really like letting our bees build natural comb. These frames are so beautiful but don't hold up well in the extractor or on their way down the bumpy road (some do) but they can make such great cut-comb or be used for crush and strain.

The concept of partial foundation frames is pretty simple, the rigid plastic foundation that comes cut to fit standard langstroth equipment is cut in half, or thirds and installed in the wooden frame as normal. We used a chop saw to cut small stacks of the foundation very slowly with a sharp blade so as not to shatter the plastic- allowing the blade to speed up all the way before beginning the cuts seemed to help. The installation of the partial sheets is very fast and easy, but we do have some recommendations for installation in the hive and for preparing a hive for any kind of foundationless removable comb. 

New comb being built and filled with nectar next to the partial sheet of plastic foundation

An extracted honey frame fresh from the extractor after being uncapped and then spun. Most of our partial foundation frames held up well in our radial extractor even though the wax was brand new in most of these frames.

Before introducing any kind of foundationless options for our bees, we do our best to level the hive or stand. We learned the hard way that our bees are as subject to the laws of gravity as we are, and any new comb being drawn will typically hang straight up and down.  If your hive is a little bit slanted from one side to the other (forward or back is fine) the bees will build comb straight downwards, coming away from (and sometimes disconnected from) the bottom and sides of the frame.  If your comb isn't hanging straight in the frame it can make inspections very difficult or damaging, and it will affect every other new frame that it is placed next to.  (We actually try to slope our hives a bit forwards to help with drainage, but are now very careful to avoid side to slide slanting! There were some very angry hive notes from that day...)

Here is a new partial foundation frame that was built on the fireweed flow and is just being finished by our bees.

Handling frames like this also require some consideration of temperature and gravity.  Consider how heavy the two foundationless pieces of comb are on either side of the foundation, and looking at how well they are or are not attached to the frame side bars can give you some indication of how best to handle a frame like this.  If its really hot out, all of that new wax will be slightly more prone to sagging and breaking. Generally, free-drawn comb is very strong if held upright, but if you're accustomed to flipping frames back and forth (the bottom of the frame towards you for example) then all of that weight is distributed much differently and the comb can crack and break off.  Tipping the frame from left to right or even upside down is usually just fine, but habits can be hard to break and some folks have told us they get too frustrated by more delicate comb during inspections or extracting.  We are not a large scale honey outfit, and we try to make our inspections as calmly and carefully as we can- these partial foundation frames don't change much for our hive manipulations, as long as we have taken the time to install them carefully as I will explain below.   

Here is a frame that was made using a 1/3 cut sheet of plastic foundation, in the brood nest of a hive rather than the honey super.

Considerations for installing these frames into your hive body...

So if you'd like to try this out please let us save you a little bit of headache with a few simple considerations:

1. As mentioned before, level your hive body or stand from side to side so that the comb will be drawn straight up and down in the frames.  
2. Install new partial-foundation frames between fully-drawn frames or full sheets of foundation, and space them close together to avoid crazy comb. If you install multiple frames of partial foundation right next to each other, you are more likely to experience cross-comb and funky shapes in the spaces next to the foundation. Sometimes you can cut the edges of those comb pieces and push them back into the frame, sometimes it may be easier to just cut it out all together.  
3. ​In my experience (and Lauri mentions this as well) the cell size surrounding the new partial or foundationless frame can dictate what is drawn in the space where your bees have the choice.  So if there's drone comb next to them, they seem more likely to draw drone comb in the space you've just provided.  
4. Until your bees have begun to draw the frame out, the partial sheet will slide back and forth in the frame- we think it's nice to have the sheet centred in the frames, but nailing/stapling the sheet to centre it seems like too much work when the comb will quickly fix it in place.  So we are just careful to centre the foundation as we are installing it.  
5. Your bees WILL draw drone comb if they've never been given the option of drawing it before... We find that if there is drone comb available to the hive then the urge to draw more is reduced and they again will be motivated to draw worker comb. (Read: if you constantly cut out drone comb, your bees will be sure to constantly draw you more of it...)

A nice honey frame of partial foundation ready to be uncapped and extracted (or used partly for cut comb)

Michi uncapping a frame of partial foundation for the extractor

We liked using these frames in the broodnest too, the girls didn't seem to mind at all. There tend to be a bunch more passageways between combs with any amount of foundationless comb- something that we think might be important in our typically cold dark winters when it may be difficult for bees to stray too far from the cluster to retrieve food.

Another good frame in the making- note the cells are all worker size on this frame

Overall we were pretty happy with these partial foundation frames, and will build some more next year. We liked the option of cutting out comb for specialty comb honey jars as they sell well in our region. As beekeepers that value foundationless frames for various reasons, but transport their hives on bumpy roads and use a radial extractor, this little equipment hack seems to be good middle ground. 

Some of our 2017 cut comb fireweed honey

Our 2017 fireweed honey and Squamish Highlands honey