Middle wall
A central wall is a rolled or cast plate made of beeswax with a pre-embossed relief in the form of equilateral hexagons the size of worker bees - brood cells of a naturally built honeycomb . Middle walls are used in beekeeping to order and speed up the honeycomb construction of the bees. They are available for all common frame sizes .
description
Middle walls are soldered into frames. Several wires are clamped evenly apart in this, which are heated with the help of a transformer and thus melt the wax on the central wall. After it has cooled down, the middle wall is firmly connected to the wires and thus to the frame. After the frame has been hung in the colony, the bees pick up the given pattern and use the space on the honeycomb in the best possible way. You build more regularly than without a middle wall and also faster, as you can start finishing work on the entire area at the same time.
Due to their regularity, honeycombs built on center walls can be thrown off with a honey extractor without any problems, in contrast to unbalanced wild structures. If a honeycomb is damaged in the process or has been in use for a long time, the honeycomb is cut out of the frame and melted down. New middle walls can then be made from the cleaned wax.
Cell size
The standard cell size of today's middle walls is 5.4 mm and goes back to the work of the Belgian Usmar Baudoux between 1890 and 1930. He found out that the cell size of the honeycomb influences the height of the bees. Baudoux's idea was an increased honey yield through longer proboscis and larger honey stomachs. However, studies by the two beekeepers Dee and Ed Lusby from Arizona showed a connection between cell size and the bees' susceptibility to mites. For this reason, there have been reduced cell dimensions of 5.1 mm and 4.9 mm for some time.
Advantages of the middle wall
Usually bees build a honeycomb from top to bottom. When using a frame without a central wall, the bees do not extend it all the way down to the lower frame support in order to use this gap as a quick passage between the honeycombs. The frame is completely filled with a honeycomb template through a middle wall so that the bees can expand and use the entire available frame area. In addition to the wiring of the honeycomb, which is necessary for soldering the middle wall, the complete expansion up to the sub-carrier offers a much better stability for the honeycomb.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thomas Kober: Small bees - why not? Beekeeping needs Josef Muhr GbR, accessed on January 15, 2017 .
- ↑ See Beeventure - middle wall