Drone comb between frames

[NeilV]

In my two strongest hives, the bees have taken to building bridge comb between some of the frames (in the space in between boxes). They did not do this when drawing out the frames. It seems that they are doing this now because the hives are just so full of bees.

They are mostly making drone cells in these bridge comb areas. This makes the hive inspections a little more difficult.

Questions:

1. Is this normal/is there anything I can do about it?

2. Do bees ever build swarm cells in the spaces between frames (as opposed to at the bottom of the actual comb inside a frame). I am worried that I might be missing queen cells when I inspect. The bridge comb gets torn up when I pull off a box, and it can be hard to tell what it looked like before separating the boxes.


Thanks,

Neil

[AR Beekeeper]

Clean out the bridge comb and give frames of foundation for them to draw. If you are not using drone frames for varroa control this is a good time to start. If drone frames are present in the colony less wild drone cells are built.

[D Coates]

Neil,

All of my 7 hives did the idential thing. I've even got a frame of drone comb in 5 of the hives (the other two are stacked nucs). Two of them hadn't laid in the those. The other three had.

[wcubed]

If I didn't respond to this question in another thread, I meant to.

You can avoid this problem altogether if you provide brood comb in outside frames of the brood nest and maintain correct bee space between frames.
Havn't seen it in years. See item #26 in POV this site on drone management for more details.

The problem for you in seperating boxes is bad enough, but consider the wasted colony energy when you fracture those cells.

Walt