How to wire a bee hive frame, and embed foundation

Heres how to wire a Langstroth hive frame and embed the foundation wax. Your frames may be different (might have a slot at top and bottom) but I think this will work with different frames. Just make sure the wire is tight! This wire I think is stainless steel, and I heated it with those two electrical wires I showed and the power supply in the background, my supply is slow to heat up, but yours may be quick so experiment to see how long it takes to embed the wire, you dont want to slice up your foundation sheet into 4 pieces! sorry about the bad lighting and the sniffing, I have a cold, in summer!

Category:

Howto & Style

[MrGgorann]

Hello,

What is the thickness of the stainless steel wire? 0.5 mm or 0.6 mm?

[cruddiestcrudever]

@MrGgorann I'm not sure, it won't matter very much anyway.

[MrGrzv]

Looks like a lot of manual work. How many of these are necessary for an average family?

[cruddiestcrudever]

@MrGrzv It's a bit time consuming but you do it in the off season (Winter) and if you put some music on and sit down for an hour you can get through quite a few. The bee boxes I use hold 10 frames each, each hive can have 1 to 5 or 6 boxes, if there are enough flowers around.

[GreenMountainBuffalo]

So..is the heating of the wires necessary or not?

[cruddiestcrudever]

@GreenMountainBuffalo Yes, to embed them into the wax. 

[Johnny253H]

Can any power supply be used to do this or will this direct short blow them up? What voltage is being used? How many amps?

[PFCBeetleBailey]

Hey, if you want to make 70 more videos I can send you some empty frames!!

[cruddiestcrudever]

@brokenshackles101 Yes you can have it any size you want, but usually the brood chamber has full depth frames. The Frame in the video is not full depth. The "board" of wax however was full depth so I had to trim it to size. The board is called foundation wax, or foundation sheet. You should be able to get it from any good bee supply store/website for about $1 a sheet.

[brokenshackles101]

Does it matter how big your brood chamber is? You cut yours to size. Can I make mine any size I want? I have never seen a board of wax like that. Where did you get it from?