Tighten Wired Frames Crimping Tool

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. In this video, I'm going to show you how to take a wired frame from this to this. So before we go any further, please check out honeybeeBay.co.uk, an online beekeeping marketplace connecting buyers and sellers. Right, so today's video, like I said, I'm going to show you how to get a loose frame wire back to a really, really nice tight frame wire. And to do that, I'm going to use the frame crimping tool from Swienti. So I got this tool direct from Paul Beardmore at Modern Beekeeping. I paid full price for the product, and in this video I'm going to give you my honest review and recommendation for the product. So as we spoke about in previous videos, I'm moving over fully now to a wired frame system. So as previously, I used to use unwired frames with wired foundation. Now I'm moving over to a wired frame with wireless foundation, and I've done that for various reasons which I won't go into, into this video. But what it means is you end up with a lot of frames like this that have very loose wires. Now if I was going to go and try and put a new piece of wireless foundation onto this frame, I'd actually have quite a lot of issues aligning that foundation and getting it straight. And if you don't align your foundation and get the wire straight before you put the foundation onto it, what that can lead to is really poor alignment of combs within the brood box. So in this video, which is going to be a really nice short video, I'm just going to show you how to use this product, how to get the frames really nice and tight, and then get them ready for using them in the new beekeeping season. So the product comes from Swienti. I bought it from Modern Beekeeping. It was about £7 or £8. And I have to say, it's got a really nice click to it. So as soon as I picked this up, I thought this is a really well-made tool. It's got a nice, really ergonomic wooden handle, stainless steel all round, and it just feels really well made. So immediately I thought this is great news, a nice well-made product. And I know I constantly go on about Suyenti hives in these, in these videos and how much I don't like them, but Suyenti are a really good manufacturer of a lot of beekeeping products. So, this piece of kit is exactly the same. It's got a really nice, good quality feel to it, and I'm sure it's going to do the job really well. So, it's a very, very simple design, and all you're trying to do where you're retightening these frames is get them so they're a little bit tighter. You're not trying to get it to the point where they're going to snap, and if you use this too much, it will snap. But effectively, what you've got here is a straight piece of wire carried over a fixed Distance. So it's one piece of wire carried over a fixed distance. Now what you could do if you wanted to tighten that wire is expand that distance, and that would tighten the wire. Obviously you can't do that, the frame distance is fixed. So what this product here does is it zigzags the frames, and by doing that, it allows you to put it back into tension. Now the immediate thing that you want to do with this product is put it into place and go all the way along. You don't need to do that, and if you do do that, then you can't further tighten the frame in years to come. These frames, you'll be amazed, they only need a tiny go on this product, and you only need to do it over a small section, maybe a quarter, maybe half, depending on how loose they are. You don't need to go all the way across. So that's the beginning of the frame, and you can see it's really soft. There's no tension in it whatsoever. And we're going to take that frame and we're going to put a nice amount of tension in it ready for applying some wireless foundation. All you do with this product, really simple, you just put the wire in between the 2 stainless steel rollers, close it down, nice tight grip, and then you just roll it across like that. So I've done about a third of that one there and I'm going to do the same to the top as well. So like I say, don't Feel the need to go all the way across. You don't need to. You just need to get this into a position where you can align the foundation that you're putting onto it. You're not trying to make it into a musical instrument. You just want to get it just tight enough to do the job. And there you go. It's as simple as that. Probably takes me five or six seconds per wire. But like I said, just be careful. Don't go all the way across because then if you do that, you can't come back at a later date and retighten it again effectively. You can have another go, but it doesn't always work. I always suggest go for about 25 to 50% first, see how much tension that's put into it, and then take it from there. If you need to go further and do the edges again, you can do that, but what you're looking for is just to get it tight enough to align the foundation that you're putting onto it. It's not a musical instrument. Although I say famous last words, it's not a musical instrument, we're going to listen to the note that it plays now, and I'll show you how different it was to when it wasn't tightened So you can see that's all you're looking for. Just plays a little note and you've just got enough tension in there just to align the foundation. So it doesn't need to be any tighter than that, although for the sake of this video, I'm just going to show you how tight it will go because it really can get it going really, really tight. So that is the finished product. I'm just going to tighten it on the full length now Just to show you the difference that it makes and the difference in the pitch of those notes. So you can hear I've added lots more tension into that now, but I'm pretty much at the limit of how much tension I can put in here. So when that slacks off over use over the next few years, I'm going to struggle to put that much more tension in there. You can do it, but you lose the ability to do it the more that you put these ridges in here. So just like I say, be cautious. And try and go for a conservative approach just to get that limited amount of tension in, just to get those brood foundations aligned. So in terms of a product review, this is superb. I'm really, really happy with this. It's a cheap product, it's well made, it does the job that I want it to do. I couldn't ask for any more. So really happy with it. Like I say, you can get this all over the world. They're made by Suyenti. There'll be distributors who sell these all over the place. They're around £8. I got this one from Modern Beekeeping. If you're in the UK, give them a look, they're a really good company. So I won't dwell too long on wiring up frames and putting tension into them. No-nonsense beekeeping, like to keep this video really short just with the key facts. So as always, thanks for watching. Please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.