BBKA Forum

In the Journal of Apicultural research (JAR) the following was published in March this year. I don't have access to the full 'paper. However what is interesting is that the abstract would imply that new comb is better than old and that a 3 year cycle of comb replacement does make sense. Maybe I need to get rid of my "vintage" comb after all!

"Abstract
A study was carried out to investigate the influence of differently aged wax combs (foundation as zero, 1, 2, 3 and 4 − 6 years old) on some biological aspects that affect the productivity of honey bee colonies. Twenty-five package colonies were equally divided and situated on each of the tested combs during the spring of two successive years (2018 and 2019). The obtained results revealed that worker brood areas, worker population, worker life span, weights of newly emerged workers and drones, and honey yield significantly increased with fresh combs. However, drone brood areas increased with old combs, and wax combs age had no effect on worker survivorship. It could be concluded that the wax combs aged from zero (foundation) to three years old (light color combs) are more preferable in the performance and productivity of honey bee colonies than the older (dark color combs) ones".

All i can add to that..is you know when comb needs replacing ...

But have you noticed how queens just love to lay in old comb ?

Yes; and they will sometimes avoid foundation given half a chance too!

Smaller bees from older comb and I have a paper somewhere that showed queens laid slightly better in new comb vs old. But differences were statistical and unlikely to have a major influence on ones beekeeping habits.

I have one colony that drws comb that is much darker than the others??
Its a sod to spot fresh eggs in.

I have always thought it interesting that the swarming mechanism of bees means that it is the parent and mainly young bees who depart, leaving the home territory and a considerable amount of its assets to her daughter. The swarm is necessarily established on new comb and leave behind the old.

In the great majority of plants and animals, it’s the progeny who have to depart to go to establish new territories, leaving the parent remaining in charge of its established home.