When does one move the divider board?

[xmonday]

When first installed in my new topbar hive, my girls built a palm sized comb in 4 days and a spread hand sized one in 11 days.
After 8 weeks, 9 1/2 combs almost fill the 10 bar space I gave them. 6 days ago I moved the divider board back, giving them another 5 bars to build on. Now I observe they walk on the bars (as seen through the viewing window) but haven't built anything on any of the new bars.
Does this tell me anything? Am I doing something wrong?
xmonday

[jmgi]

Are the 5 new bars brood bars? If they are, instead of putting them all together in front of the divider board, put one new bar between two brood combs that are already drawn out, they will draw them faster that way. I wouldn't do all 5 at once though, maybe 2 or 3 at a time, and as they are well on their way drawing those out, then add more the same way. When adding new brood bars try to always add one between the divider board and the last drawn comb next to the divider. The reason for doing this is that the bees will at some point stop using the comb for brood and proceed to use them for honey storage. When they start using the comb next to the divider for strictly honey, then you can start adding your honey bars which are wider than the brood bars. Hope this helps. John

[xmonday]

John,
Thanks for the helpful response. In my reading on top bar hives (before today) I had not seen the comment that the bees will use comb exclusively for honey storage. How helpful of them! I had visions of having to destroy brood to harvest honey.
I think I get the picture: for now give them a choice: an in-brood bar and an out-of-brood bar and be guided by their actions. In fact in the instance I described, I had placed one bar in the rearmost within-the-brood space (everything is brood plus honey right now) and then placed 4 bars behind everything else. When I went into the hive today (6 days later) I found they have in fact drawn comb on the in-brood bar (I just couldn't see it through the window for bees) and are still ignoring the out-of-brood bars. I get their message: we are raising babies - the winter larder comes later.
I note they are still doing nothing with the very front most bar in the hive. Could they have judged it as less than optimal for brood, and are saving it for later honey storage (and perhaps insulation as well)?
Fascinating little creatures.
xmonday