dan hendricks said:

> If you segregate your extracating frames from those in which brood
> has been raised, as I do, then there is no advantage in having all
> your frames the same size.

In my view, there IS a significant advantage in standardization -
one can take drawn comb that had been used for extracted honey,
and create a brood chamber containing "fully-drawn" comb for a split,
package, or swarm in a matter of seconds.

The queen can thus be unrestrained in her laying from the start, rather
than being limited by the triple whammy of a lack of drawn comb, a
small colony population, and a lack of significant nectar.

While this may be only a minor advantage during a significant nectar
flow, one hopes that packages and queens arrive well before the
blooming of the significant nectar plants.

Clearly, once one has used a frame for brood, it can no longer be used
in honey supers, but this is easy to track with stencils, thumbtacks,
permanent magic marker, or wood-burning pencils.  I am a big fan of
colored thumbtacks to track the age of brood frames (using the yearly
queen colors) .

        jim

        farmageddon