spacer bar question

[tbh-fan]

hi guys,
I am in the middle of building my first horizontal hives. I decided (at least for this coming season) to use regular frames instead of top bars only. Their width will be 25 mm, with 10 mm or so wide spacer bars placed in between on the hive top. I also intend to go foundationless. And, I will gonna buy nucs on "regular", large cell combs.

My question is: will be 35 mm (25+10 mm) comb spacing too wide, since we could expect the bees will build  combs with smaller cells on foundationless frames?
for any suggestion, advice, thank you in advance!

P.S.: I decided to use spacer top bars along with frames because I think they will give me a less stressful hive manipulation, at least during winter oxalic acid treatment

[Michael Bush]

>My question is: will be 35 mm (25+10 mm) comb spacing too wide, since we could expect the bees will build  combs with smaller cells on foundationless frames?

35mm will work ok.  32mm will work better.  Natural sized comb with smaller cells is 21mm thick with 11mm between. (Baudoux: ABC XYZ of Bee Culture 1945 edition Pg 126)
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm

[tbh-fan]

ok, ok,
but would not the bees some time (few seasons) to build so much smaller cells (and combs)?
if I use immediately 7mm spacer bars on already built, large-cell combs, where the comb spacing was 35 mm, and suddenly reduce the comb spacing down to 32 mm, would not be a too large difference for the bees?
I thought it should be done stepwise...let's say I intended, at the beginning to use 10 or 9 mm spacer bars...and then to reduce them to 7 mm...
Michael, what do you think?

[Michael Bush]

In my experience spacing them 32mm will encourage them to build smaller comb than spacing them 35mm will.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm
See the section on comb width.

[tbh-fan]

thank you, Michael,

i will try it

I'm gonna getting the bees (4 colonies) next weekend, yet I still have to cut out the spacer bars :-D
probably i will go, at the very begining to something in between, e.g. 8 mm+25 mm...we'll see..