# cut out and small cell



## bevy's honeybees (Apr 21, 2011)

About mid/late-summer last year I started switching out my foundation brood frames with foundationless but still have some hives with about half or less of their original foundation frames. They will not regress until all frames are foundationless, correct, and then after switching out one more time? I have not measured any cells from those hives. Is it possible to have both small cell and larger cell in the broodbox--how does that work?

Today I did what turned out to be a very small cut out (more than half the comb destroyed within the last month) and also it appears to be queenless. She probably died when those first combs got knocked out is my guess. Anyway, maybe 100-200 bees left, I put the 2 remaining comb pieces into one frame with room to spare. Thats how small the remainder bees and comb are. No brood left at all. Forager bees still coming in. I left the box there and picked it up at 9:30 pm after screening the entrance. 

I took other comb pieces laying on the ground. This is the first time I've ever measured cells. I found my caliper from my cardiac monitor watching days and set it to one cell, then compared it to a bunch of the others and they were extremely close in size. I printed a milimeter ruler, and low and behold, they were just under 5mm. I'm going to try and get a hive started with this one frame by taking a frame or two from another box. I put them in a 4 frame nuk box. Should I do a quick measure to see if the frames I'm pulling are small cell? They're from a spring swarm catch thats doing well. Can I assume that any swarm catch building on foundationless frames will be small cell?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Can I assume that any swarm catch building on foundationless frames will be small cell? 

They vary in size partly because some are recent escapees from large cell and some are swarms from bees already on natural comb. But as a general rule they will always be smaller than large cell.


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