# Moving bees to natural cell



## Grid (Jun 5, 2009)

I'm in the same situation - two hives with two deeps each, wanting to go natural cell size on mediums (10 frame to start), and not sure of the best way to regress.

Thanks anyone!
Grid.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Under works fine. On top works fine with some kind of ladder. The main thing is to get some brood in the medium box and the queen there and an excluder between them and the large cell. Then you can let all the brood emerge and then pull the large cell out. The brood in the box with the queen insures they will care for her and expand the brood nest there. You can do this any of several ways. One would be to pull the empty deep frames out and put in medium foundationless in the middle of the brood nest (interspersed with drawn comb). Then when they have brood in them take them and the queen and move them to the medium box. Another is just do a cut out of the deeps. Cut all of the brood out of the frames and tie it into mediums.


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## doc25 (Mar 9, 2007)

Do you use drawn foundation in the "honey supers" year after year and only change out the brood boxes when splitting?


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## fat/beeman (Aug 23, 2002)

hello
for me I like to remove all the wax after extracting scrap down the frames and install new wax. just because I like fresh wax in supers and also gives me more wax to make new foundation. I have been on small cell so long that even without wax sheets they seem to build small cell close to what is natural cell.
this also helps with the wax moth eggs. if you store it you need to puton moth crystals or even at least the mice eat it up.
Don


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

When doing foundationless, I don't use foundation at all. But if I extract I reuse the drawn comb, yes.


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## doc25 (Mar 9, 2007)

Thanks, I guess that is how you can maintain honey production by reusing drawn frames. This will still allow the bees to change out some of their brood comb every time you make a split as well.


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