Oh no! What should I do?

[Draginol]

So I was away on business for a couple of weeks and I come back and the hive that hadn't been doing well has been busy. I had 2 mediums with frames and on the third medium I had put in a couple of jars of sugar syrup before I left.  When I came back, the 2 mediums were filled and they had constructed this in the third medium.

Just opening it caused a lot of larval cells to be opened which is a big bummer.

I'm not sure what I should do.  What I DID do was put another medium on with frames, then another medium on top of that with no frames and put this back in.  I don't plan to harvest honey from this hive this year, I just want to make sure they're okay (I'm not into honey and such, I just like keeping bees).

I put my other pictures here:
http://draginol.impulsedriven.net/article/316745/Brads_Crazy_Summer_Bees

Any ideas?

[Bill W.]

Separate each piece of comb with your hive tool and brush the bees back into the hive.  It doesn't look like any of that comb is big enough to put in a frame.  If you have a queen excluder, I would put it on the top of the hive, and then set the pieces of comb above it in an empty medium.  Hopefully that will give them a chance to hatch the brood before you remove the pieces.

I did this with a really messed up hive and it worked out fairly well.  They tried to draw more natural comb in the medium, but I just opened it and scraped it off every day until the brood emerged.

Of course, if you don't care about salvaging the brood, you can just brush off the bees and dispose of it.

[Brian D. Bray]

Bees hate a void, if they find one they will build comb in it.  You situation looks like one I had years ago when I was feeding a hive, left on vacation (I was 13) and came back to have the feeders embedded in comb and a major mess.  If possible put what brood area can into foundationless frames, then cut everything out and put in frames and left the bees rebuild.

Now that you have such a mess be aware that the wax tracks left on the sides of the super, inner top or migratory top, and top of frames just below will make the bees want to draw lots of burr and bridge comb so a lot of TLC is going to be required.

[buzzbee]

The next time you can place an inner cover on and put the syrup and extra box above the inner cover.

[Michael Bush]

Cut out the comb and tie it into frames unless it's too soft and heavy.