I have been seeing a lot of posts mentioning burr combs. could someone explain to me what that is.
Its what some refer to as excess or unusable (to beeks) comb/wax. Built up comb/wax that's outside of the frame area, most built and used as 'ladders' for bees to travel about w/in the hive.
I'm in the 'leave it' crowd as I found removing it is 'generally' a waste of time because the bees will just rebuild to 'their' specifications. Bees know best. The only exception I've found is the bottom of the frames in the very bottom super when manipulating the broodnest, they must be scraped off or they won't fit right when placed in another super.
Some say leave it, some say remove it all. I'm sure you'll get responses from both sides.
This has been a good topic in the past. You might want to check the archives.
thomas
I am with Thomas. I mostly leave it. You see it on the tops and bottoms of the frames and some on the sides and the inner cover. The girls seem to use it as a ladder to get from one box to another and frequently you will find drone pupae in it as well when it is in the middle near the brood nest.
Scraping it off just makes them use more energy to build more. I don't know of any way to stop them from doing it. The only time I really scrap it off is when I am cleaning up frames to store for the winter.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesterms.htm#b (http://www.bushfarms.com/beesterms.htm#b)
"Burr comb = Small pieces of comb outside of the normal space in the frame where comb usually is. Brace comb would fall into this category. "
I also mostly leave it unless it interferes with being able to inspect the boxes or frames.