Why I Use 10 Frame Castellations In All My Supers - Bigger Crops And Easier Uncapping

In this video, I'm going to show you why 10-frame castellations are best for the super. So first up, this is what a castellation looks like. Thin piece of metal, generally galvanized, and it has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 spaces. You have one on one side of the box, one on the other side of the box, and then the frames go in between, and the castellations give you the desired spacing. So you can get these in 12s, 11s, 10s, 9s, and 8s. I think I've only ever seen 12s once, 11s are a complete waste of time. 8s and 9s are very, very interesting. And once you've got drawn comb, you can experiment with 8s and 9s. But the beauty of 10s means that you can start them off with foundation. They don't always do it perfectly. They sometimes need a little bit of tinkering, but it gives you the best bang for your buck, and it's the most efficient using a 10. So you might be thinking, well, why do you even need castellations in the first place? You don't. You don't need castellations if you don't want castellations in the supers. You can space them by eye. You can use plastic spacers. Or you can just use the SN4 kind of normal spacing that you're going to get. But it will leave you with a problem come the end of the season, which is you're going to struggle to get that wax off the frame without cutting down into the wood. Ideally, what you want to do is build those frames out slightly wider than the wood. So when it comes to uncap, it's really, really easy. Now, capping a frame that's been on an 8s or a 9s is even easier than a 10. But if you try putting foundation in an 8s and a 9s, you are going to leave yourself in a huge amount of trouble and the bees probably won't draw it out properly. 10s gives you that option, and that is why 10s are the sweet spot for me. So let's prove all of that wrong now and show you what a mess the bees have made using foundation in 10s castellations in this colony that is expanding well in the spring. So we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 frames. You can see I've got the castellation here, sits flush on the top. So you can see sitting flush like that means that we're on a bottom bee space configuration. The space is on the bottom and not on the top. In the castellations there, I always like to use the SN1 frame. So that's the frames without the self-spacing, not the SN4. And you can see how much easier they're going to be to uncap. Now, if I just give you a look down there, all you're going to be able to see is foundation. But if we go into the middle there, you will see that the bees are nicely drawing that out. One thing I want to show you though in there. So that one's empty. But look, if we can look in there, right in the middle of the frame, you can see there's a little bit of brace comb going on. That is about as bad as you're going to get with 10s. If you did 8s or 9s, you would have absolutely loads of that. So all you need to do is get in there and just scrape it back and the bees will fix it. But looking in the middle here doesn't look like a huge amount of brace comb. There's only one way to find out though. Let's open it up and see what they've done. So remember, these frames were 100% foundation about a week ago. And as you can see, a perfectly drawn out frame. So then the next frame out, you can see the bees have drawn that all out very nicely. This is the kind of thing that you'll get on 10s though. If I show you that there, see where they've kind of lipped it up a little bit? So all you do is you just go in, do it with a hive tool, do it with what you want, take off those 2 bits there, and then maybe like push that bit back up. So just a very, very simple repair. And I would do the same along there. I'd kind of get my hive tool, take all of that wax off there, and just go through cleaning them up. You only need to do this once. Once the bees get the bee space correct, then they won't do this anymore. So this is just a one-off clean. So it's been a couple of weeks, but the bees are already upstairs working on those castellated frames. Let's pull a couple out now and show you just how well the bees have drawn them out. I've got a second frame there that is perfect with the exception of just that tiny little bit of burr comb there that I will clean up in a bit. Third frame, Pretty much perfect. Very interesting thing to show you on that 3rd frame though is just how bowed that bit of wax is there, because that's the depth that you end up seeing. Quite hard to show it on camera. See if I can show it like that. So that's kind of like normal wax level, and then up there, slightly elevated position. Exactly what I want to see. And I'm really glad that I can show you this frame here as well, because that is what happens when it goes wrong. Really, really simple one to fix. But that's the only concern that I ever have with using castellated tens is you will get one or two frames like that. It's so easy to fix though. All you do, shake off all the bees like that, take down any bits that are sitting over the edge. Doing another video on wax buckets and why you should always keep one. Hit that subscribe button. There we go. You can see pretty much got that frame back to say a 90% now. And on the second passing, they will clean that one up perfect. So we'll give it a few more weeks, fast forward, see what this colony looks like once it's Fully expanded into those boxes. So remember, these are 10s castellations, and all I'm putting in there is foundation. Frames are not drawn out, but they're doing exactly what I want them to do, completely drawing them out but leaving a little ridge above this line here. I don't want it that thin, I want it slightly fatter than that. So when I come to uncap and I'm taking the frames down like that, the more built out that frame is, the easier it's going to be for me to uncap that honey with That is the purpose of 10s. 9s are better, 8s are even better than that, but you get crazy comb everywhere with 8s and 9s, especially if you're using foundation. But with 10s, they seem to respect the space. So if I go next box down again, the bees have completely filled all of these boxes. It's absolutely crazy. But this frame here is just the perfect example to show you that thickness that I was talking about. So this is a really good angle. If I go down this side, you can see they've not built it out quite as much yet. But if we move over here, look how much higher that is than the line of the frame. You can imagine once the bees have capped all of that over, coming in there with a knife on that side is going to be really easy. You're going to be able to get all of that wax off with nothing under the line, which means it's super easy to extract. So you can see here the bees have really taken to those castellations. We've got a box there completely full and every single one, if I go over the top there, you can see there's no burr comb, there's nothing joining it up. Fully respected that 10 castellation spacing. And exactly the same over here. Tiny little bit of burr comb up there, but you'd get that normally as well. I think it's safe to say that this has been a resounding success. So it's been about 6 weeks since we've been in this colony now. The bees will have filled out all of those frames on the castellated supers, drawn the frames out to the right size. Let's finish off the video. I'm going to go inside, find one of these frames. I'm going to uncap it here in the apiary and show you just how easy it is to uncap a frame when you castellate your supers just like If I bring it to that camera there, you can see they're starting to build it out beyond that line. And when they start to cap it, you'll see that they cap it beyond that line too. So let me just shake the bees off there, give you that shot again. So I've just shaken the bees off there, and hopefully you can see what I mean. We're drawing the frame out on either side, which makes it so much easier for uncapping. Really is time-consuming uncapping if you do not do this. And here we go. This here is the frame that I wanted to show you. I'll shake those bees off, and you'll see now why this is the easiest frame to uncap. So this is what you can expect when you use Castellations. Not fully capped over, but perfect. It for the purpose of this video, but as I said, the big difference is how it protrudes in front of the frame like that. And there we go. Does it need any further explanation than that? A perfectly uncapped frame. In a single cut from the knife. If you don't use castellations or use castellations at the wrong sizing, you're going to be struggling to get that capping off. Use castellations in 9s with SN1 frames and you'll get beautiful uncapping like that every single time. If you enjoyed this video, the biggest compliment you can pay me is sharing it on social media.