Crossed Comb

[kaisfate]

Well, I hope I didnt royally mess things up this weekend. We went into the TBH we hived on 4/6 and found tons of crossed comb, as I was afraid. 8 bars all starting out straight and then veering to the west as it progressed down the bar. brood and honey...so we made some adjustments and cut some off to try to straighten it out. Had one brood comb collapse completley, so i propped it upside down against the follower board.

I was/am using a mix of 1 1/2 and 1 1/4 TB's with a wax filled kerf...not working. I took the rest of the bars and cut the sides at 45 degree angles and placed empty ones in between the "somewhat" straightened comb...I didnt do a very good job. I decided to leave the last 4 bars crossed as it was all brood and didnt want to disturb them that much.

Good things that came out of this:
1) saw lots of capped brood
2) hubby saw the queen
3) got to taste some of our honey
4) realized I have some pretty gentle bees because we got no stings even with the mess we were making.

Sorry no pics, we had our hands full. Im going to let these ladies bee for a few weeks and just hope for the best...

[sqkcrk]

Aren't Top Bars Hives the greatest? :)

[kaisfate]

Aren't Top Bars Hives the greatest? :)

It's totally my fault, I put a crappy "guide" on it for them...

[sqkcrk]

It's totally my fault, I put a crappy "guide" on it for them...

I don't know about that. Trying to get the bees to build comb the way you want them to is against their nature. So I don't know that it was your fault. I have had bees build nice combs that went from one plasticell frame to another. The bees often misinterperate the memos we try to send them.

[oldenglish]

Sounds like you had the exact same experience as I did. I tried adjusting the comb but it kept collapsing. I think I got most of it fixed but will find out next weekend. Even then they did a better job than one of my langs which is almost at 90 degrees to the frame