# 11 Frames in Medium Super



## Tom06- (May 11, 2013)

Started today on cutting down 60 frames. I have been reading Mr. Bushes book. That plus my age, 65 this year, makes me want to lift less. So I got 60 new Dadent frames to assemble. Last month my neighbor needed help to move. I gave him some time. The next day he dropped off a board planer as a gift. It worked great to cut down the top bars. Set up and take a pass on one side. Then flip them over reset planner and run them back through. Top frame wood piece came out 1inch wide.

The small end pieces are more problematic. I need to get them down to 11/4. Too short for the planner. I may try in the morning to attach them to a long board to hold them in place. If that does not work, does anyone have an idea?


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## snl (Nov 20, 2009)

Why 11 frames. I keep mine at 9 once drawn.


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## Tom06- (May 11, 2013)

changing to all supers for my hives. 
11 frames are just for my brood boxes.
I will still use 9 frames in my honey supers.
Check out Mr. Bushes site.
This is about going treatment free.


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## snl (Nov 20, 2009)

Tom06- said:


> Check out Mr. Bushes site.


There are many points of view besides MB. I believe you'll find that configuration difficult to work.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>The small end pieces are more problematic. 

Which pieces did you plane? The end bars are the only part you need to plane to get 11 frames in and the only part that is 1 1/4". You may find that if you assemble them (making sure not to put nails where they will get planed) and then plane them you have a handle (the rest of the frame) for managing them.


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## Riskybizz (Mar 12, 2010)

Yet another leap into the world of fringe beekeeping.


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## Tom06- (May 11, 2013)

I milled the long frame top piece down to 1 inch wide.
Next I need to cut the end pieces down to 11/4 width.
I edited the original post for clarity.

I am just doing a couple of hives at this time.
I will compare the health of these hives to standard spacing.

At one time or another all new ideas are on the fringe.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I've never found it worth the effort to cut down anything other than the end bars. If I was making them from scratch, I'd make the top bar narrower, but not once they are made.

>At one time or another all new ideas are on the fringe.

Narrow spacing is far from a new idea:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesframewidth.htm#historic

And certainly did not originate with me:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnotinvented.htm#narrowframes


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## Tom06- (May 11, 2013)

I agree about the effort to cut down the top bars. But as the frames were not assembled and with the new planer I was able to feed 8 into it at a time. So it only took about 15 minutes to do both sides of the 60 top bars.
The Delta planner is a fine machine. Would I have ever bought one, no. But it was a great gift.
The end bars are to short for the planner, it eats them. I will go another route with them.


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## hideawayranch (Mar 5, 2013)

After going to a Michael Bush Seminar, I did the very same thing, and to my eternal dismay the bees propolized so tightly that I could not break free the frames without busting out the sides of the hive box. Needless to say I ended that experiment as soon as possible. Not to say there are many of Michael Bushes ideas that I have adopted and have had success with. Just saying this was not one of them. Keep on Keepin on Mr. Bush!


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

I've got 1 1/4" frames (11 of them) in my 10-frame deeps. I don't think I'll continue shaving them down because it really increases the amount of time in assembling frames. If I could devise a plan on how to do many of them at once it wouldn't be such a big deal. As is I run them through one at a time two passes each (one per side) on my joiner. Too much time spent honestly.

I don't find them difficult to work at all, SNL. Of course they aren't 10 year old frames either. They are all foundationless and they haven't built any burr comb between boxes... maybe because they have a place to put drones via foundationless? Don't know. I think Lauri reports less burr comb with her half sheet method too.

Not doing it for any other reason than a more compact broodnest. Under no illusion that it will somehow make my bees immune to mites or anything like that.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

> to my eternal dismay the bees propolized so tightly that I could not break free the frames without busting out the sides of the hive box. 

In this case maybe it would have paid to cut down the top bars... but I haven't had that much of an issue. Propolizing is somewhat a genetic trait and your bees may be more prone than mine to filling that gap. Mine seem happy to keep it open. I do make the top bars narrower when I make my own frames or when I get someone to custom make them for me... Also, you need to figure out how to pry frames out without breaking the boxes (a problem everyone has) and that takes some thinking and some work to figure out all the tricks. Of course you start with what NOT to do, such as "never pry back against the frame rest rabbet" and "if something starts to give, stop and figure out another way". It's usually better to be prying against another frame when trying to break a frame loose... rather than prying against the box.


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## gnor (Jun 3, 2015)

Tom06- said:


> I milled the long frame top piece down to 1 inch wide.
> Next I need to cut the end pieces down to 11/4 width.
> I edited the original post for clarity.
> 
> ...


There are a few ways to do this:

If they are bought frames, they should be machined close enough that you can bolt several together through the wire holes. Find a couple of long 3/32" bolts at the hardware store. This should go through your planer.
Find a cheap table saw, then spend around $50.00 on a quality ripping blade from Freud or the like. This will give you nice smooth cuts.
A router in a router table.
I make my own frames, so if I were doing it, I would just start off and cut everything 1/8" narrower.


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## ToeOfDog (Sep 25, 2013)

I use a table saw to shave the top bar and the end pieces. This is boring and monotonous work. Plan on a break ever 30 or 40 pieces to refocus concentration.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I would suggest that if you are shaving only the sidebars without also narrowing the top bar, that you do a test on several hive bodies and try them for a season. I inherited a bunch of them and my Carni type bees in colder climate build a very lot of inconvenient bridge comb between top bars. There is no comparison to the bridging seen with standard space between bars. I have made some from scratch with narrowed top bars that preserves standard bee space and they are not a problem with being bridged. 

As Michael says, perhaps it varies with your particular strain of bees or your climate but I know that the idea can have warts.


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## snl (Nov 20, 2009)

ToeOfDog said:


> I use a table saw to shave the top bar and the end pieces. This is boring and monotonous work. Plan on a break ever 30 or 40 pieces to refocus concentration.


Is it worth the time and effort? Do you find that great a difference having more frames in the hive to do all that?


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## Duncan151 (Aug 3, 2013)

Riskybizz said:


> Yet another leap into the world of fringe beekeeping.


The view is really nice out here on the fringe, you should try it. You never know, you might just learn something new.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

I always enjoy trying new things, and I have tried most of them, but I have found few things that the "fringe" proposes that are successful enough that would make it worth the extra effort.

We all have opinions, and mine is that if beginning beekeepers would put as much effort into learning standard beekeeping methods as they do the "fringe beekeeping," they would become competent beekeepers much faster. The "fringe" is for the time when you have learned enough about beekeeping to properly evaluate your experiments.

Of course if a person keeps bees and does not have a desire to become a competent beekeeper, they just want to play around with a few hives, and they can afford the expense of losing bees each year or two, then the "fringe" is the way to go. There is always something to keep you occupied, some problem to solve or some new gimmick to try.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

I find it intriguing that the essay on Bush's website lists "less drone comb" as the first advantage of narrow spacing. Yet, when Lauri Miller and a host of others have commented that "foundationless" approach results in a plethora of drone, Bush maintains that drone numbers are naturally constrained by bees at some pre-determined value.

I find the two statement at odds. It is likely that narrow comb spacing does limit drone cell construction, and equally likely that foundationless systems results in drone cell "overshoot" above the normal population fraction.

A balanced, research-based recommendation would not promote practices in the absence of any controlled study. Yet we have a constellation of gnostic and esoteric beliefs driving "fringe" beekeeping. These are based on observation and supposition. Observations, in the absence of data, are notoriously subject to bias. Supposition leads one astray.

The practice is not reducible to rational argument -- psychologically, it is a "justification by faith". The skeptics and data-based critics play the counter-intuitive role of simply reinforcing belief of the adherents -- the gnostic marks of membership (rosin dipped, medium, top-entrances) are social cues of solidarity within the "fringe".


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## Riskybizz (Mar 12, 2010)

ah yes the "fringe factor" couldn't agree more


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I find the two statement at odds.

These are two different things. Narrower spacing gives the bees the "clue" that what they are building is worker comb. Wider spacing gives the bees the "clue" that what they are building is drone comb. Foundationless in general gives the bees the freedom to build whichever they need but the spacing leads them in one direction or the other because the bees building the comb are taking their cue from things such as the spacing of the comb.

In a natural system there are many things working in contrary directions which in the end balance out.

"Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth." --Blaise Pascal


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Michael Bush said:


> Wider spacing gives the bees the "clue" that what they are building is drone comb.


So we can agree that using FL frames in a 10 frame set-up yields a marked over-abundance of Drone?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

No, we cannot. You apparently are going to lump drone comb in with drone brood and assume a 1:1 relationship.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

Interesting that so many opinions crawl out of the woodwork over a simple concept such as running 11 frames in a brood box. Especially interesting that so many get posted by people who have never even tried 11 frames. I always heard "don't knock it till you've tried it".

I've used 11 frames in the brood chamber since 1977, so a total of 38 years on the "fringe". I stay with it because year in year out there is enough benefit to justify using them. 

Micheal Bush posted that there is less drone comb built with 11 frames in a foundationless brood chamber. I concur though bees will build drone comb when and where they decide it is needed. Commercial bee breeds are pretty consistent that they build worker comb for the first 4 frames in the brood nest, then they build a couple of drone combs, then they will switch to a mix of worker and drone combs. The end result will be about 30% drone size comb in a Langstroth size brood chamber. Using 11 frames in the brood box will cut that mix down quite a bit, in my experience, you get about 20% drone comb instead of 30%.


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