Foundationless Frames!

So my frames from kelleybees.com came in today. I have 1000 of them to put together now! Well, only 960 left to do :)

Couple of reasons to go foundationless:

1. Natural Cell Size (or small cell size). If you buy foundation you are most likely gong to get somewhere around 5.4mm to 5.9mm cell size. The bees have been artificially enlarged. Thought was that larger bees could carry more and get deeper into flowers. Actuality is that they cannot forage as well and they are now weaker to fight off pests and disease.

2. If you buy foundation chances are very high that the wax you put in your hive has some traces of some nasty chemicals. If you let the bees make it from scratch you are not putting anything foreign into your hive.

This is the first wave of natural cell size foundation these bees will be on so they will still be larger that "normal" but smaller than if they were on foundation. The hope is that they can regress down to their natural size over time. This means that I will continue to give them fresh frames to build comb on, each time hopefully getting closer to their natural size.

Now, weather or not to wire these frames.... Without wire the support will be less. Gravity i guess will streatch and pull at the foundation so it sounds like I should wire them. But will it be enough to justify the extra work? I guess I will wire some and not others and see how they do.