Sorta sounds like Gomer Pyle. Went to check my TBH around 1pm..it was 95 degrees outside, probably more inside the hive... 2 weeks ago I added 2 bars to the brood nest, one at each end. Plus 2 bars at the back of the honey. Don't know if this is a good way or not, but it was what is shown in book "Small Scale Beekeeping".
I started at the back, removed the follower board. The last bar in the area had just started having some comb drawn. The next one (would have been the 1st of the 2 I added) looked to be heavy with honey, upon closer examination the comb was also attached to the next bar in sequence, in fact it looked as if the bees had just built new comb upon the already capped comb .
1st Suprise..
Carefully started separating the bars, and the one that looked to be double stacked pulled loose, and I had broken comb on one side of the bar for 4 bars. Tried to brush bees off and placed it in a bucket for later processing, did you realize bees don't brush off very well from comb that is wet with honey ?
2nd Surprise...
I kept inspecting the brood nest, and the 1st bar I had put in front of the area was filled and capped with Honey! I was expecting Brood, anyhow I dropped another top bar in the middle of the brood nest this time.
3rd Surprise...
When I arranged my buckets and strainer cloth I found 10 capped brood cells from the honey area, all in one comb...did not expect that!
It is only getting down to 70 tonite, so I expect those few pieces of comb to yield their contents to gravity overnite.
??is there a preferred place (by the bees) to add new comb in the brood area, don't believe I would have found brood in the honey comb, if they had used the empty top bar I put at the front of the brood nest for BROOD instead of honey....
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