How To Get Frames Drawn Without Foundation - Simple Foundationless Method

Today I'm going to show you how to use this frame in beekeeping without putting a full sheet of foundation in. A lot of people in the UK and across the world do not like to put sheets of foundation in their frames. Now the reason might be they're not sure of where that wax has come from, they're concerned it could be harboring disease, possibly pests, Or it could just be mixed or diluted, like poor quality Chinese wax where they add different types of wax in. You pick up one of those frames— this is genuine wax here— but you pick up one of the Chinese ones and you smell it and there's no smell. Beeswax should have a really nice strong smell, and it's very, very easy to pick out the fake wax and eliminate it. And I understand people's concerns. So I see a lot of people doing this now. They go down the foundationless route. They never buy any foundation in. They harvest the wax from their own bees. And then they try and create sheets of foundation to go into their beehives. But if you've just got a few colonies of bees, you're never going to produce enough wax to create your own foundation. It's just not possible. I'll give a shout out here to Clown Bee 3D. They produce wonderful 3D-printed rollers for you to create your own wax foundation at home using this method here. Super, super cool. Separate video on that one coming. Hit the subscribe button. Right, I'll stop spinning it now. I'll get back to it. What we're talking about today is affixing. Starter strips to a wooden frame like this. Now, when I started beekeeping, I really struggled with this. I thought that was a good idea. Someone said, you haven't gotta pay for foundation, just put a starter strip in and then your bees will draw it all out and everything is fine. Word of caution with starter strips while I move this around a little bit as well. If you put a starter strip onto a frame like this, place it into a colony in April or May, I guarantee you'll come back and it will be full to the brim with drone brood, guaranteed. Empty space in the frame in April and May, the bees will fill it with drone brood. However, if you put a starter strip like this into your hive In say August or September, they will fill every single frame with worker brood, which is what we want. The problem when it comes to doing this though is how do you fix it in? Now the common method is, and you're probably thinking this is what I'm going to show you here today, you melt some beeswax, you pour the beeswax along that bar there, and then you put your starter strip in and the beeswax holds it in place. Kind of does hold it in place, but not for long. If you get a lot of bees on there, they're clustering up, they're starting to draw it out. It is a huge, huge amount of weight, and that beeswax is nowhere near strong enough to hold that wax in place and stop it from going onto the floor like that. The bees make a mess, they draw it in all weird, wonderful ways, and then what happens? You come back to the biggest mess in the world. So we don't want that. I've got a new method for you today. I'm going to show you how to stick it in place on that top bar there and make sure that it never ever falls down. So this is what we're going to use. This is Food-grade hot glue adhesive. Really, really simple. I'm here doing a tour of Italy, learning everything I can about beekeeping. You never get to the end of learning about beekeeping, do you? You just get a little bit better every day. If you've got any cool tips, tricks, or guidance, stick it in the comments. Help out your local beekeepers and share that wealth of knowledge. Sharing is caring. But to get this in place, all you do, you put your hot glue in a glue gun, you melt your glue along the frame, you get your starter strip, stick it in place, leave it to dry, and it is fixed there with a much stronger grip than using melted beeswax. It's a food-grade glue. So don't anyone in the comments say, oh, you can't use glue in beehives, you can't use glue in supers. Of course you can. You get plastic beehives, you get plastic supers, you get plastic frames. They're food-grade as well, just the same as this glue. Once it is set, it is inert and it is safe for food production. Let's get to it and I'll show you how it's done. So first thing you need is some wax. I've got some genuine beeswax here. If you don't want to use any wax, as I said, you can do it yourself. Harvest the wax, render it down, use this method here to get it into sheets. And then if you wanna go with the Clown Bee 3D roller, you can actually put that on it. But I say with starter strips, I wouldn't even bother doing that. I would just stick the sheets of beeswax in place and let the bees do the rest. First thing you need to do, get your sheet of foundation and cut yourself a nice starter strip. Stanley knife's really, really good for this. So there we go, one starter strip. Next thing you do, take a glue gun, get these from Hobbycraft or Amazon. They are really, really cheap. You don't need a mega powerful one because the glue that you're gonna get is a food-grade adhesive that has a very, very low melting point. So you can't really burn yourself on it either, but it means it is much quicker, but also it doesn't melt all of the beeswax. Get a tiny little bit of melting, but once it's set, it holds it all in place. The next step is to take your glue gun and to put a really nice thick seam of glue all the way down that groove. This is what we're going to use to stick that wax in place. Now you want a good amount of glue in here. Don't scrimp on it. For anyone who spotted the wax moth larva there, very well done. I don't think they'll be worrying anyone in this glue. You then take your piece of wax and you want to position it in place on that glue. Now you have to work relatively fast here and that wax just kind of wants to curve all over the place. But once you get it there, you want to hold it into position. And if you can, just try and press that wax down into the groove like that. Keep it in this position until that glue starts to hold. With this adhesive here, it's about a couple of minutes, I think. However, once you get into a position like this where the wax is holding it in place, that's it. You can just go and place that onto a nice flat surface and just let that glue and the beeswax that's melted fully firm up, and then it will grip it in place nicely. So there we go, the glue is set, the foundation's in place, and that kind of is ready to go into your beehive. Some people put them in like this. However, once the bees start to cluster up on that, you will get additional weight. And then as they draw it out, that weight increases. And without any reinforcement on here, there is still a risk that that might fall out. So there's 2 options for you. One, you can use a vertically wired frame like this, common in Europe, which coincidentally is where I am at the moment, hence all the wax moth larvae. By placing the starter strip at the very top of that one there, as the bees draw it down, they're going to be embedding the wax within those wires there. Make sure those wires are nice and straight, but also make sure they're nice and tight. The other way of doing it is you can replace these wires here with bamboo sticks. That's a nice way of doing it as well. So you just kind of wedge your bamboo stick everywhere you see a wire there, and then the bees will embed that in there. I prefer the wire method because if you use the bamboo skewers or the bamboo sticks, the bees will not draw any cells out on either side there because it's not going to be deep enough for you. So wires or bamboo sticks and you are good to go. So it is as simple as that. Let's do some throwing around with it. I'll throw it, I'll chuck it, I really will give it some absolute aggro. Let's chuck it around. Okay, that didn't work. But look, isn't that a good demonstration there? I dented the wax because I was spinning it around like that, but it didn't come out. That glue really is rock solid. Look at that, spinning it round. You can't fake this. This really is solid adhesive and an excellent way to affix your starter strips into frames if you do not want to use foundation from the shop. What do you think? Good idea? Not a good idea? I personally have just saved myself a huge amount of money on drone foundation. This is what I'm going to use going forward. Probably best if we finish the video there before I knock everything down, but that wax is going nowhere.