# Not wiring idea?



## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Think about using hair pins; (bobby pins) They are considerably cheaper than the patent support pins from bee suppliers. I used some that I snipped a bit shorter so they dont reach as far onto the foundation. They can be pulled out after the comb is drawn solid to the frames or left in. I found the bees chewed away the wax around many and left the foundation loose. I wire and embed but have a fairly good system so not too time consuming when I do it. You can probably find threads if you do a search for bobby pins or hair pins here on Beesource.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

My first thought is the staples will probably break a lot of end bars. If (vertical) crimp wired foundation and wedge top and bottom bars are available you could probably get by with no horizontal wires. Just remember any corner you cut in an attempt to save assembly time today may well cost you additional time tomorrow.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

jim lyon said:


> Just remember any corner you cut in an attempt to save assembly time today may well cost you additional time tomorrow.


Yes it is a whole lot easier to "fix" the foundation before you turn it over to the bees than it is after they take possession!


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Learn to wire faster. A controlled release spool holder helps.

Crazy Roland


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## pleasantvalley (May 22, 2014)

Apparently I'm not a long enough veteran in the industry to have ever wired a single frame in my career. I did find this interesting tidbit published today, I wonder if it has any merit: https://newsandfeatures.uncg.edu/kaira-wagoner-honey-bee-research/


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## Bkwoodsbees (Feb 8, 2014)

If indeed the iron levels in bees is higher when using wired frames is that a bad thing? I use pre wired foundation and horizontal wire my brood frames for extra support. I have not seen any negative effects. Maybe iron enriched bees are tougher. I may now put on my honey label Pure raw honey plus iron. This of course is related to the link in pleasantvalley's post.


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## Bkwoodsbees (Feb 8, 2014)

Pihlpet we have an old saying " A short cut is the longest distance between two points".


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## pihlpet (Nov 3, 2011)

Thanks for all the input.
Its not about wiring faster, if we are talking about wiring Im pretty sure its done as fast as possible. The question was if it would be possibe not to wire at all... 

Its seems it is not possible, atleast on commercial scale.
I could give it a try on a small scale to see how and if it works.. 

The idea of this thread was to learn from others experiences..

Thanks,
Peter


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Frames that are not wired will blow out. Other than plastic, spending the time in wiring frames is the best option. 
It needs to hold granulation through the extractor


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

As you are wiring, keep picturing in your mind all of the money you are saving from not buying plastic, not having to dispose of it in 20 years, how you will not have to worry about the plastic decomposing and contaminating your honey, and how much happier your bees will be on real wax. The job will not go faster, it will only seem like it goes faster.

Crazy Roland


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

You think the plastic breaks down and leaches through the wax?


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Bkwoodsbees said:


> If indeed the iron levels in bees is higher when using wired frames is that a bad thing? I use pre wired foundation and horizontal wire my brood frames for extra support. I have not seen any negative effects. Maybe iron enriched bees are tougher. I may now put on my honey label Pure raw honey plus iron. This of course is related to the link in pleasantvalley's post.


Here's the relevant quote from the article:



> That’s not all Wagoner’s discovered about honey bees while working on her dissertation research, though.
> 
> When she began her research, Wagoner used plastic frames in her hives, but when she got tired of sawing plastic frames apart, she began using frames with a wax foundation instead. Those frames are stabilized by steel wires. After a while, Wagoner noticed something strange.
> 
> ...


The hypothesis is that the removed larvae also had higher iron content, and were removed because of their higher iron content. The article doesn't say that explicitly, but that's what it sounds like.

She probably needs to sample the wax across the foundation to see if/how the iron levels in the wax vary with distance from the wire.

The next step would be to verify that higher iron levels in wax cause the larvae removal (e.g. induce higher iron levels in other comb, away from the wire) and if the correlation persists, figure out the why. Either the nurse bees directly detect the higher iron levels and find them objectionable, or the higher iron levels cause a health problem with the larvae that cause them to be removed.

It's a very interesting datum, but I'd want to see a lot more controlled science around this observation before I'd call it a conclusion.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Ian - I have no knowledge of tests done on wax for polypropylene decomposition byproducts, but I have yet to find a piece of plastic that does not change with time.

Waterbug - I believe she miss-interpreted a phenomena. I have seen a similar situation with new foundation, but the queen had skipped those cells, not that she laid in them and the larvae where removed later. We assume the wire caused her to believe the cell was not proper.

Crazy Roland


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

crofter said:


> Think about using hair pins; (bobby pins) They are considerably cheaper than the patent support pins from bee suppliers. I used some that I snipped a bit shorter so they dont reach as far onto the foundation. They can be pulled out after the comb is drawn solid to the frames or left in. I found the bees chewed away the wax around many and left the foundation loose. I wire and embed but have a fairly good system so not too time consuming when I do it. You can probably find threads if you do a search for bobby pins or hair pins here on Beesource.


We tried bobby pins on wax deep foundation our first year. We retired it all our second year.

It held up OK for brood but if the outside frames they loaded with honey were a mess. I got wire, learned to appreciate grommets, been experimenting with melting wires into foundation ... I'm starting to appreciate why the pros developed this stuff.

Our VSH queens definitely don't like to lay over wire, though.


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## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

From my experience the queen does not lay in the cells if the wire is not embedded all the way. I haave used two different spur embeders and one always gives me that result, hence the reason no longer use it.
-Dave


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Some vertical wired foundation has the wires exposed more on one face than the other. I assumed they didn't get laid up by the queen rather than that the eggs or larvae had been tossed by the workers. The second round they seem to get filled in. Dunno!

Like Iamthewaterbug says"It's a very interesting datum, but I'd want to see a lot more controlled science around this observation before I'd call it a conclusion"


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