I try to insert at least one foundationless frame into each of my hives in the spring so the queen doesn’t gunk up the space between the boxes with drone comb. Foundationless frames also allow me to harvest comb honey or make crushed & strained honey.

Bee jacket, no gloves, mist bottle instead of smoker. Here are the details:

00:00 — Intro to foundationless frames; how the bees build comb in a foundationless frame; explanation of stater strips and so on.

05:10 — How I use mist on the bees. And so on.

06:25 — Opening the hive.

06:40 — Problems with 9-frame brood box.

06:50 — A protein patty.

07:20 — Misting the bees.

07:50 — Pulling out first frame.

08:10 — Explaining how I insert the foundationless frame (between two frames of drawn comb).

08:25 — What I like about the 9-frame brood box method.

08:39 — A frame with plastic foundation that bees didn’t build on well.

09:00 — Laying the inner cover in front of the hive.

09:50 — Talking about these super gentle bees.

11:00 — Inserting the foundationless frame; explaining how the bees want to fill in the empty space.

12:05 — My weird inner cover that doesn’t have an upper entrance.

13:35 — Explaining what I just did.

14:20 — Bees marching back into the hive (time-lapse).

16:10 — Digging into a hive full of more defensive bees until the battery on my camera dies.

May 21st, 2021: This is what one of the foundationless frames looked like a week later:

Foundationless frame almost full of comb exactly one week later (May 21st, 2021.)