My family and I are new at bee keeping. Our first hive is little more than a month old and they are overfilling frames in the upper of two hive boxes. Extra comb hangs from the bottom of the frames; we removed this comb to prevent the frames from fusing together, but it is full of larva! :'(
Even weirder; the frames of the bottom hive body seem almost untouched by the bees though. Few cells are even used and there is no hanging comb.
If anyone has had a similar problem or solution, please help.
do you have two hives one on top and one on the bottom. If so did you start out this way? Larva is good, do you have capped brood?
Burr comb is the cells built between the frames. Some bees use it as ladders maybe. They get filled with wax and drone brood. Most people scrap it off. It don't hurt, just a hassle and a mess.
With your boxes, I assume you have 2 deeps. And they are in the top box, not the bottom box, right? Bees always start at the top and work their way down. They also store honey on top of brood. That is the reason we put honey suppers on top. When starting a new hive, use 1 box and let the bees fill 7 frames before adding another box on top.
If you are using foundation the bees will often build bridge comb between the upper frame and the lower frame for drone comb. It's not such a problem if you go foundationless.
On foundation they have to do some funky restructuring in order to build the larger cells for drone brood so they just make bridge or burr comb instead. With the foundationless system they can build to suit anywhere they wish.
Scott
Did you buy both boxes and the frames from the same supplier? There should be 3/8 inch between the bottom of the upper frames and the top of the lower frames. If there is more than that, they will always fill in the extra space.
If you built your own boxes and/or frames, check your dimensions.
more info would help super goat
I second iddee. It sounds like you might have mismatched frames/hive body.
I hardly ever scrape off the burr comb on the bottom, because they will just fill it with burr comb again and I think I would rather them work on getting me honey then building a new ladder every time I go in and inspect or manipulate the hive. just my 2 cents
Thanks for the advice. Maybe ill leave the comb alone for the next month or two ad see what happens.
Quote from: supergoat on May 15, 2011, 09:35:03 PM
Our first hive is little more than a month old and they are overfilling frames in the upper of two hive boxes.
Did you start them in one box or two? When starting a new hive, it's recommended to start them in one box, then add the second box once they have drawn comb on about 80% of the first box.
Although they will eventually move down, you can jumpstart them by swapping a couple frames of brood from the top box with empty frames from the bottom box.