Quote Originally Posted by prakel View Post
A few things. There's a high cost involved in running colonies on natural comb...
Thanks for the explanation, Prakel. That makes plenty of sense. I've heard Murray on the subject of starter strips, I think that "false economy" might have been the phrase he used.
For various reasons, honey crops haven't featured much in my first 4 seasons of beekeeping. One reason is that I really like the bees I have, so I like raising colonies to pass on to other people. (By the same token, I like seeing their drones around.) Another reason is that the yield I've most wanted from them so far is experience of bees, & of working with bees & of bee behaviour. Wild comb certainly provides quite a dose of that!
...but I don't want to just keep bees as pets forever, I want them to make a contribution to the local (human) food supply, so I'll have to face the wax/efficiency question someday. Good to have those reference s, thanks. I'm really interested in the idea of using plain sheets of wax - don't think I've heard of that one before. That would answer one of the things I'm looking for, which is to let the bees choose their own size of cells. An experiment for next season, maybe...