<Have not used foundation for a few years now. New frames are strung but
only have a starter strip and are placed between drawn frames - the bees
draw a range of cell sizes with smallest in the center. Colonies seem to do
better on the natural comb than foundation but that's not an objective
judgment since there are no control colonies living on foundation to
compare them with.>

This years winter project is to build some horizontal frame hives (I've
considered a vertical cabinet style, but that has it's own problems).  My
mother and possibly my brother are both interested in keeping bees, but
neither can handle the lifting because of age and back problems
respectively (8 frame mediums would be too heavy too).  I was curious what
frame size do you use for your horizontals?  Any pics would be appreciated
if you've got them.

I run mostly all mediums in my small operation at the moment (so it would
be easier to make medium nucs for the new hives), but am concerned that
mediums do not have enough frame space for a honey band with brood below.
I also run a mix of frames including foundationless, which have been plenty
sturdy except when in the white wax stage.  I tried narrow foundationless
frames (1.25") based on the idea that you could get more frames per box and
the cluster could cover more brood etc, but just found they were annoying
to get drawn unless they were inbetween perfectly drawn frames.  The bees
shifted them over to get the spacing closer to 1.5" which made a mess and
ruined interchangeability when I didn't catch it in time.  I'm just
culling the shifted ones out for comb honey so no big loss in the end.
Jeremy
West Michigan

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