Testing Drawn Comb Versus Foundation - Why is Drawn Comb SO Valuable?!

In this video, I'm going to show you why it's so beneficial to have drawn comb when it comes to expanding colonies and gathering honey. So I'm going to split this video off into 2 series. The first one, I'm going to talk about having drawn comb in the brood box, and the next series, I'm going to do a test with a super full of foundation versus a super full of drawn comb. In this video though, what I'm going to do is I'm going to add a single brood box of foundation underneath a big booming colony Towards the end of March, I'm also going to add another brood box full of drawn comb to a similar-sized colony at exactly the same time, and then we'll stitch everything together and I'll show you just how much faster the colony that's got the drawn comb can expand versus the colony that's got foundation. Now I don't want this to put anybody off. Obviously, if you're a beginner beekeeper, you are going to have foundation. This video is more to prove the point that just wait until your 2nd, 3rd, 4th year when you've got a good stock of drawn comb to show you just the incredible difference that it makes to both the ability for the bees to expand into that brood nest and more importantly, the difference that it can make when it comes to actually accumulating a honey crop. As I said, we'll park all talk about honey for a separate video that's coming up next week. In this video, we're going to talk specifically about how to increase the size of a brood nest early in the season by using drawn comb. So today's video, we'll talk a little bit about it. It's going to be a really simple introduction into what I'm going to do. I'm going to pick a couple of colonies out. One's going to have drawn comb, one's going to have foundation. It's still pretty volatile here in terms of the weather, so I'm going to add that second brood box underneath the existing brood box so the bees aren't going to lose too much heat going upwards. And then in later sections of this video, I'll probably switch those around to get the bees to move up to actually start drawing out the comb. I wanted to do it earlier though, just to give the bees ample room to expand and get big without them losing too much heat going upwards. So here's my 2 boxes. First one here has got all foundation in, brand new foundation. Got a couple of gnarly looking frames over there as well. They've just had fresh foundation put in them. They're just older frames. What we've essentially got here though is 10 frames of completely naked fresh foundation. The bees aren't getting any help to draw that out. We're not going to feed them at all, and we'll see how long it takes for the bees to actually draw out all of this box here. And then just start expanding into it, laying eggs, turning it into brood. This box over here is much, much more like it. So this is a well-used brood box, and as you can see, every single frame is completely drawn out, 100% drawn out. So as soon as the bees want to get into this box, they can just go in, they'll tidy it up. And it's probably a good idea just to kind of get a close-up on some of these frames at the moment, because look how battered all of it is. The bees will fix all of that, and they'll turn it into perfectly usable combs again. But as you can see, every single frame in here is perfectly drawn out. This is going to be the one that's going to expand much quicker. So I know this isn't going to be a perfect experiment because obviously you're going to have different variables in terms of the colonies that I'm putting it on. I'm going to try my best though to choose two very similar colonies. We're not going to feed them. We're going to try and keep it as consistent as it possibly can throughout the course of this series. You'll see just how quickly both of these colonies grow, and you'll be able to see the. Differences between using that drawn comb and using the foundation. Let's go and find some suitable colonies and get those boxes into position. Right, so these are the 2 colonies that we've chosen. This one here is going to be the drawn comb. This one over here is going to have the foundation on it. All I'm going to do is I'm just going to lift the total brood box up, slip the additional brood box underneath, and then we will leave them. It's still too early to be going through that brood nest and messing things around, and we do have a very cold snap that's due in the next couple of weeks. Just wanted to get this manipulation in place though, just to give them the additional space if they need it, and then we'll see how they get on over the next few weeks. So there we go, that's the 2 colonies sorted. One that's got a box full of drawn combs and the other that's just got a box full of plain foundation. I'll give you a quick snapshot now just showing you the size of both of those colonies. They're about as close as you can possibly get them at this time of the year. But they can expand at different rates. Like I said, it's not a fully scientific test. We'll come back there in a few weeks and we'll have a look at how far those bees have expanded. As soon as you get through the next cold snap, I will reverse those boxes. I'm going to keep running it though as a double brood setup, so I've got a 14x12 box and a National Deep box, and we'll see how quickly they can fill that up as a double brood. That is a very, very big double brood. Later on in the season, we'll stick a queen excluder in the middle. We'll turn that national deep into a super, and that will come up above the queen excluder to enable us to get some honey into it. But we'll be long past the test then, and we'll see which one of these colonies wins—the one with the drawn comb or the one with the foundation. As I said, we'll be back in about three or four weeks, check up on these colonies, see how they're getting on, and see how far they've expanded down into their new boxes. Right, so here's the two colonies. This one over here had drawn comb. This one here had foundation. I'm going to open them up now. I'm going to see how they're getting on. So we'll start off with this one that's got the drawn comb, see if the bees have even moved down into it. And if they have, we'll see if they've started drawing it out just yet. So this is what the colony is looking like from the top. If you remember, both of these boxes here, they're on a 14 by 12 configuration. And then that's the additional box that we added. So this one here is all foundation. They're pretty much filling that top box now, so I would expect to see at least a few bees down under that bottom box. Let's see how far they've gone down and see if they've started drawing it out. So this is the bottom box here. Not much going on down here. Got a cluster of bees. I've pulled out those frames though. They're not doing anything to those frames. They're just clustering up. So the bees are yet to move down into that box that's only got foundation in it. Let's go and take a look now and see how the bees are getting on with the box we added that's got drawn comb in it. Right, so maybe this is a little bit of an unfair test, and I do take that into consideration. This colony here had a kilogram slab of Honeybee Pro. The other colony had exactly the same amount of fondant, but this colony here is so much bigger. Look, they're already drawing all of this wild comb up in the feeder. You look actually into the feeder, and yep, they're going completely crazy up there as well. Wild comb, it's above the queen excluder, so I'll tidy all of that out now. So obviously I need to take into account that different colonies are going to expand at different times, but these are both F1 Buckfast off the same daughter, so they should be relatively similar. Let's take a look now though and see down in that bottom brood box, the one that we added of drawn comb, see if the bees have moved down into it. And what will be really interesting is to see whether the queen has gone down there and started using that as a brood nest. So they're pretty much filling out this box here. And I know that not everyone's going to have drawn comb available for them to go and do something like this. Takes you a good amount of time to build up a good stock of drawn comb. But when you've got the ability to add drawn comb for making splits or increasing size in the brood nest, or up in the supers for that matter, which we're going to do a separate video on, look at the difference that it makes. The other one, they've not really even gone into it yet. Definitely not started drawing it out because there's not enough of a flow coming in. for them to start working that out. Whereas when it's drawn like this, the queen will just lay where she needs to lay, as long as there's sufficient bees in order to cover the brood. So I'd be very, very surprised if we don't see any brood down here. These boxes are heaving. Let's pull a couple of frames out, see if we can see any brood. Right, so there's no slabs of brood down here, but every single frame in this box is covered with bees. So I've got 10 frames of bees, and the vast majority of them, if you can see from this image here, have got eggs in. So I'll come back in 7 days, 10 days, we'll follow it on later on in this video, and you will see that all of these frames of eggs have turned into frames of brood in all stages. So it just goes to show, really does give them such an incredible advantage being able to give them drawn comb anywhere within the beehive. So I do appreciate these 2 colonies might not be carbon copies of one another. You might get subtle differences in the way that they build up and the way that they But there's no denying the fact that the one that I gave drawn comb to has reached the point now where it needs supers. Like, this colony here needs a super as soon as possible. It's showing the ability and the want for them to go and draw comb going upwards, and both of the boxes are completely full of bees. A little bit late on this one, actually, whereas this one here, they've not even moved downwards yet. And bees will always move downwards to fill any available space before they really need to go upwards. But we'll capture all of this in the next part of the video. Colony on this side, the one with the drawn comb, they're getting a super now because they really need it. The colony on this side that had the foundation, they just need time and they will gradually start to draw out that foundation. But it just goes to show the real big difference that you get from adding drawn comb as opposed to adding foundation. Right, so 2 weeks later, has the colony that got the foundation caught up with the colony that had the drawn comb? Let's get inside, see if this colony's moved down. And then we'll take a look at this colony here and just see how far ahead they are. So this is the colony that had the foundation, and as you can see, the 14 by 12 box is completely full now. So I'd be very surprised to see if they've not moved down onto that foundation, started to draw it out, and started to expand into it. Can't get much fuller than that. That is completely full, that box. So I'll take this box off and we'll take a look down into that foundation box and see, have the bees moved down yet? And finally, the bees have started to make a bit of a go on that foundation. You can see over here, that's just foundation, and now the bees are starting to draw that out because they're running out of space. They'll only do this on a flow, whereas with drawn comb, they'll make use of all of that space and just organize the nest the way they want to. There's only 2 frames in this colony where they've actually started drawing out the foundation now. They'll move into it relatively quickly. But it just goes to show how slow it is when you're using foundation. This is what the bottom box is looking like. You can see a little bit of activity over in that corner. Still got lots of frames there of foundation with nothing on them. A slow start over here with the box of foundation. So it's kind of what I expected really, and I said before about them being uneven, maybe this one was a little bit behind. But we're here 2 weeks later and they're only just starting to get down into that box Now let's close this one back up. We'll go and take a look at the one that had drawn comb, see how they've expanded coming into spring. So I got a very pleasant surprise when I opened up the feeder. I just put some of the burr comb in there from last time just to leave it in there. Good place to store it, nice and clean. And it's full of bees, absolutely jam-packed full of bees. And if you remember last time, we added an additional National Deep box on the top. So this one here has got National Deep, queen excluder, 14 by 12, and then that box of drawn comb that we put in underneath. And whenever you see bees coming out the top like that, you can almost guarantee that the box below is going to be full as well. And as predicted, we've got one full box of bees. So they have been very, very busy. And that early expansion, putting that drawn comb in there, has just meant that the queen's been able to expand so quickly, build up these numbers so much quicker than the other colony on the right-hand side. So these frames are really heavy as well. Absolutely jam-packed full of nectar. They'll be fanning that down now, turning it into honey. But that's not just a box full of bees, that is a box full of bees and loads of nectar as well. Really happy with that. So then next box down, this was the original 14 by 12 brood box, completely jam-packed full of bees. Going to be tons of brood in there as well. I'll take this one off now and let's take a look down in the brood box that we added that had the drawn comb in. The one with the foundation, they've just started, literally just started drawing out that foundation. Let's see what the bees have made with the box where we put in the drawn comb. Just as a reminder, I've got one box here, 14 by 12, the original brood box full of bees. I've got another box over here, National Deep, full of bees, full of honey. And then we've got another box underneath now, so these bees are turbocharged, really, really going And there we go, we have another box of bees. So that is the box that we put underneath, National Deep with drawn comb. We've got a National Deep box, we've got a 14 by 12 box, and then we've got a National Deep Super as well. So I'm going to go ahead and say I reckon the one with the drawn comb has won this little competition. They are over 31 frames of bees and they are well and truly running out of space. Yeah, they are. Space versus the other colony that's just breaking into the 11th frame of bees. They are 20 frames ahead. Back to this box here though. Last time the bees were using it, we saw some eggs. Let's pull out a couple of frames now and see if we've got any brood in here. Well, I think that's pretty conclusive. 9 frames of brood out of the 10 there. Absolutely jam-packed full of bees. I'm going to get the supers on this one because they are running out of space like it's going out of I think we've got a winner, and I think we can conclude that the drawn comb has won by quite a substantial margin. Just look at all these bees! Where have all these bees come from? This is only 2 weeks since we last saw this colony. They were just venturing down. They've added an additional kind of 15 frames of bees since then. Crazy, crazy growth. Lots of bees flying here, but nowhere near as bad as some of the other apiaries. They're not trying to sting me, they just don't know what's going on. I'm going to put everything back together again. That's the end of the video. We found out which is the best— drawn comb every single time. It's worth its weight in gold. Make sure you look after it. If you want to know a couple of ways of looking after drawn comb going out of the season, check out this video here where I discuss 2 different methods.