# Can I run small cell in brood area, and regular in honey supers?



## Beregondo (Jun 21, 2011)

When left to their own devices the bees often make larger cell for honey storage than in the brood nest.
You won't hurt anything by following suit.

HAve fun.
Enjoy your bees.


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## MrHappy (Feb 10, 2012)

I asked this a few months ago and most people said, try it and let us know. I never got any SC frames so... Go for it and let us know. I think it should work. More space for honey and less wax. I wouldn't really worry about drones. The should have those down in the brood nest. If you have some honey already, you can make sure they don't use it for brood by putting the new frames over the honey and the queen usually doesn't cross the honey band.


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## RobWok (May 18, 2011)

MrHappy said:


> I asked this a few months ago and most people said, try it and let us know. I never got any SC frames so... Go for it and let us know. I think it should work. More space for honey and less wax. I wouldn't really worry about drones. The should have those down in the brood nest. If you have some honey already, you can make sure they don't use it for brood by putting the new frames over the honey and the queen usually doesn't cross the honey band.



Funny. Thanks for passing the torch there MrHappy. I may try to set it up this weekend. I haven't checked my brood area for a lot of hives lately, and I have some frames I haven't had a chance to put together yet. Just need to run some boards through my tablesaw at a 45 to make the triangles. May wax the tip just to get the bees started. It'll be a good experiment, and I can't see how it would hurt. I have too many hives as it is, so if it does hurt, I'm not that concerned at the moment.


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

You _can_ do this if you like.

A number of us use unlimited broodnest management and therefore have no guarantee of where the queen will end up laying, and so try to keep all the comb uniform. But I do move poorly drawn comb or frames containing excessive drone comb to the upper boxes to be filled with honey. My preference would be to use plastic drone frames and then there's no mix up because they're green and they'll only end up drone. However, I'm in the process of switching to medium frames and I have not yet found medium drone frames. Perhaps somebody could point me in the right direction.


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## RobWok (May 18, 2011)

I just got 4 hives of medium 8 frame for the unlimited broodnest mgmt idea. I don't like having to use a queen excluder, so wanted the flexibility of experimentation of all the same size frames. 

However, in this idea above, I plan on using excluders. What I usually do is have 1 super above the queen excluder. I leave it on just long enough for them to put honey in that super, then I remove the excluder. The bees are resistant to move the honey, the queen is resistant to lay in the outside frames. The bees usually put honey in the center first, so I really have the excluder on for a shorter time, and rarely have the queen up top. 

I do like drone frames for honey (the idea - never got around to it). I would suggest you could always make your home. Stack them, wrap in duct tape, then run through your tablesaw with a 60T blade. The cut end goes into the track. 

Surprised they don't make a medium drone frame. I looked once for just what you state Solomon, but didn't find them, and then just got too busy to follow up.


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

The other thing I tried was to space 9 frames in the supers to hopefully encourage honey storage and not brood, but the queen laid it up anyway. Also, if it worked, my extractor is nine frame, so that would have been convenient.


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

We use queen excluders & run larger cell in the honey supers.
Our honey is very thick usually 15-16% moisture, & I can never get the small cell honey frames to extract dry, like the large cell foundationless frames do.


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