Donald Aitken wrote:
>
>         I have found that both permadent and ordinary foundation is badly
> drawn if interspersed with already drawn ( but uncapped ) combs. The bees
> apparently prefer to work on the already drawn comb rather than the new
> foundation. They seem to draw nice combs if you intersperse the foundation
> with capped combs. The new combs are drawn to within a beespace of the
> already capped combs surface; if the previously drawn combs are straight
> then the new ones will be straight. Any warpage or low spots will be
> reproduced in reverse on the new combs.
> Sorry to reprint the whole of the initial article, but there have been a
fair few of these lately, and I just had to respond. :)
 
For those of you not familiar with the Edmonton Alberta region this year,
it wasn't a great production region as we had poor flow weather.
 
Bees need a SUBSTANTIAL nectar flow to draw foundation, no matter what
kind of foundation you are using.
 
When you introduce foundation in a mediocre nectar flow, of course the
bees will be slow to draw it out.
As Donald stated if the draw combs were capped the bees would work the
foundation, of course, they had no choice. That's the way it is if the
flow is marginal. They need to not have a choice.
 
The other point is that foundation ,if interspersed, is more attractive
to the bees as they aren't faced with a whole super of it. Which has
been proven to act as a barrier to upward expansion.
Just give them some more time, they will fill the drawn comb first, and
then work on the foundation.
The important thing is that the flow ( the bigger the flow the better the
draw), and the strength of the colony determine the rate at which the
bees work any foundation. Don't be impatient!!!!!!
Yes, bees will follow the contour of ajacent comb when drawing new comb,
they are working with "bee space".
 
If I have offended anyone with this , I am sorry, but I hate seeing the
same wrong response to something that has been proven to work for the
last century and beyond.