my new swarm is building the comb the wrong way.
How do I get them to build the way of the bar instead of across all of the bars at one time?
Okay a little history for you all first.
I have 9 top bars all measuring 20 inches. and for the guide I used the stretched cotten string method with melted beeswax on it.
one person told me to put them into a langstroth frame and put them back into the hive. my box will fit the medium frames. should I do this? If so how should I go about doing this as this is my first hive and swarm ever?
thanks for all of your help.
I go somewhere in between foundationless and wax - I buy the thin (cut comb honey) foundation and break it into 1"-2" strips (it folds over and breaks easily without cutting) and use this in the top groove of a frame so that only a little sticks out, they always use it as a guide and it still means they are producing 99% what they want instead of using a prefab foundation.
Of course, now that I have said they always follow the guides, I will need to go check my hives to see which one is making a liar of me this week.
As far as your current situation, get the burr comb out right away . . . there is nothing to be gained in letting them establish it further, and the headaches down the road are monumental! (speaking from experience). If you don't have any wax around, I know lots of folks have had good success with using posicle sticks as starter strips.
You might could take you bad comb they are building and glue to to your top bars the right was by melting a little wax and sticking it to the bars. But you do need to clean it up as good as possible to keep them from doing it wrong again.
you need deeper comb guides.
if you have a table saw, cut some new top bars (or cut the bars one at a time while you swap them out of the hive), and put a slot in the middle of each one (along the entire length).
gule some popsicle sticks along the groove along the full length of each bar.
i know you weren't able to be at the conference in Oracle, but sam's talk (which includes a lot about top bar hives) is online for free:
Sam Comfort Talk (http://vimeo.com/10207692)
deknow
Can you just take out the comb thier building and reatach it the right way?