Manual

how to use the fully drawn HSC plastic frames?

For Dee Lusby, arizona, it took 20 years to get the small bee, for me, with her help,
it was 6 years.
Now with the HSC frames we can get it in some months.
A lot of small cell beekeepers in USA are using these frames to reduce the size
of their bees instantly.

I bought these frames and can offer you now a kit to get the resistant bees very quick.
This is the first time I am working with this very valid tool.
I do not like plastic at all in the hives, but it is a compromise and they remain there
only some broodcycles and we can save a lot of time.

Here I will show you how the three nucs will work that I made on 21.7.07 with big bees
and 5 frames of HSC.


prepare the HSC

That the bees accept the palstic frame better you have to rub some wax on it,

paint it with some honey and spray some lemongrass solution on it.
(lemongrass oil is the swarm catching lure)



you have to put a queen excluder in the entrance that works as an
includer to avoid that the queen escapes.

Now you put 5 frames HSC in a nuc box and add the caged
queen with candy that the bees free her after a while.
The queen has to be ALONE in the cage without bees.

Then we do a shakedown with any kind of big bees on the
HSC frames with the necessary quantity of bees.

     
     21.7.07

Now you have to bring the nuc to another apiary more than 3 kilometers
away that the bees do not return to their original hive.
     
Until they get strong you have to feed with honey, aprox. 250gr
every second day.     
          No sugar!!!!
     

I use to feed with a inverted jar with a lot of small holes in the tap.
I prepared the 3 nucs on 21.7.07
On 27.7.07 they already have laied eggs.



this is a queen of one year - daughter of the 10R queen.
The second nuc has a new queen, also daughter of 10R

The bees we have used are unregressed big bees.


Look at the size of the queens - they are very small.
- you see it very well compared to the size of the big bees.


29.7.
very hot weather for the bees 42,7°C.
I had to spray water every hour on my mating nucs because some
melted in the heat. I too ;-)
But for the three HSC nucs there was no problem.

4.8.07
the three nucs stopped breeding due to the enormous heat
two of them now have new laied eggs but the third is without queen now
I had to get off the queen excluders in the entrance because of the heat and
perhaps the queen escaped or died of the heat, I do not know
I added them another fertilized queen

17.8.07

They already have brood, not pefect, but ok.
You can see that they do not like the plastic so much.
But it is quite good, how they work.
There are already new bees born in the small plastic cells and I
observed that the young bees are quite smaller.
Here we had a lot of wind and the bees could not fly so much and
only feeding with honey they lack the pollen.
They diminished egg laying.
So I started to feed with pollen and honey now.

 

25.9.07

Now the brood has stabilized. Nuc N°1 has one brood frame
and N°2 has two brood frames.

and what a surprise
nuc N° 3 is yet eliminating Varroa mites.
They have quite a few bald headed brood -
the bees open the infected cells and take off the mites.

26.12.07

Our queens stop to raise brood from november on and start again at cristmas.
This is a big advantage concerning the fight against the Varroa mites.
The nuc N°1, after having pulled out the mites from the tapped cells, is starting again to rear brood now.
Today I havnt been able to find any Varroa in the three nucs.

1.2.08
The nucs have already started very well with the almond flower and
the mild weather also helped them.
This is nuc N°3, the same that has chewed out Varroa mites in september
as you can see in the penultimate foto.
The brood now is quite even and I could not see any mite.

10.3.08
We have changed the nuc N°3 to a big box now.
In El Paso we made last year in august some shakedowns on HSC plastic
foundation with large cell bees for our friend Wolfgang.
They have changed the best nuc already 4 weeks ago to a big box and
now we had to put another super.
This is the brood in the HSC plastic panels:



and here you can see that the bees already are working the small cells very well:



and this is the brood in the small cell wax panels built by the small bees:



And here we had added small cell wax sheets near to the brood.
The honey and pollen is in the extremes.
The bees build the small cells best
near to the brood.




Here you can see another nuc situated near to Todoque of our friend Holger.
It was made also in agust of the past year with large cell bees.
Now they are small and strong.



we also changed them now to a super:

soon more