Wiring Frames (Feb 13)

There are 3 sizes of frames; deep, medium and shallow.  In our hives we use deep frames and deep hive boxes for the queen, eggs and brood and we use medium frames and medium hive boxes for the honey stores.

Today we are wiring the deep frames.  The deep frames go in the deep hive boxes and ther are 10 frames per box.  This is where the queen will lay her eggs and the brood will be raised.

The purpose of wiring frames is for extra stability of the comb and to prevent the wax foundation from warping in the heat creating uniform comb.  The wax foundation comes with vertical wires already embedded into the wax.  Combining this with the horizontal wiring below creates a cross pattern of wire embedded in the wax.  We will be installing the wax foundation later. 




This picture shows where we have wired the frame and secured the ends of the wire into the frame by nails.  The wire is loose or slack because you cannot get it "banjo" tight by hand.  The red wire crimper tool crimps the wire to take any slack out. 

Using the wire crimper to crimp each of the wires we clamp down on the wire and roll the wire crimper from one end to the other.  It makes small "v" indentations on the wire taking up slack.

All wires are now crimped.  After we wire the frames and crimp them, the next step will be to install the wax foundation. 
We have 19 more deep frames to wire and 20 more medium frames to wire.