So much brace comb

[llgoddj]

So much brace comb
Hi all,
New to beekeeping this year. Built my TBH over the winter, bought bees and am now up to 14 bars and chock full of bees. My problem is I believe I need to add a couple more brood bars toward the beginning of my hive, yet almost all of the bars have brace comb built along both sides. Am I disturbing the bees too much by cutting out all the brace comb to add a couple of new bars for them to build more brood comb? Or should I just leave them alone? How often or should I always just go and cut out the brace comb whenever they build it?javascript:emoticon('')

thanks,
larry

[Mr.Beeman]

Cut away the brace comb and add bars. Bees don't mind a whole heck of a lot.
Cut it out only when needed to move bars. They will just rebuild it anyhow.

[Che Guebuddha]

How often or should I always just go and cut out the brace comb whenever they build it?

Hi Larry,
I too am a newbee who started in May this year so take my words with a huge pinch of salt n pepper
In my opinion NO do not cut the comb whenever they build it.
You DO cut the combs which you must for some reason manage (harvest, split, make space for an empty comb)
Hear Hear to what Mr.Beeman said above, IME they do rebuild the sliced comb very quickly.

It is Normal for the bees to attach the combs to the side of the hive. You will also observe (if you have a window) that they seem not to attach the whole comb but rather keep some tunnels for air circulation and traffic.

The real issue is if they start cross-combing a few top bars that is somethig to absolutely fix otherwise comb management will be messy for both you and the colony with a risk of killing a queen while doing the reparations. If they only curve the comb at the sides a bit its not big of a deal and can be fixed easily. Here is a video explaining how to fix cross-combs and other tips too;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCJ-G8qmdjI