Bees drawing comb between supers

I have found that most "standard" deep frames leave nearly half an inch of space between boxes, which induces the bees to build drone comb between the boxes in the spring.

There are two ways to keep this under control -- buy a couple sheets or frames of drone sized comb and let the bees use them (they work best one frame in from the outside of the box, one on each side), or put a foundationless frame in that slot in each box. The bees will draw them out as drone comb and happily use them in the spring to make the spring drone supply, then fill them with honey for winter stores. Since they have plenty of space to make drones when they want them, they will not make anywhere near as much drone comb in other places.

If you want to use foundationless frames, I recommend you put them in early in the spring so the bees will draw them out during the spring flow. otherwise they will often leave them incomplete, and draw out very wide comb on the adjacent frames to fill the gap. Makes it hard to move frames around.

Peter

A couple of thinks you might try to detach the frames from each other....

If you can lift the edges of the top box a tiny bit you can use some frame wire wrapped around two "handles" to slip between the boxes and slowly saw your way through the comb.

You can also give the top box a firm but slow twist to break the comb loose.

Notice in both ideas that I used a form of the word "slow". Bees react to fast movements and if when you broke that frame free it was a snatching or otherwise fast movement it could have riled up the bees. Slow, smooth movements pays dividends. Or, you may have simply rolled some bees which will definitely hack them off.

What type of protection do you wear?

Ed

What you experienced is completely normal. I expect this every time I go in a hive and have learned to pry the top box up an inch and take my hive tool and separate the bottom frames so they go back down. This is the least disruptive way of going about it. I never scrape this burr comb off as the bees are going to immediately replace it once I am gone. It is their roads and bridges. Just smoke the bees down out of harms way when you set the box back down. Then you can pull individual frames if you still need to.

Foolish to disallow yourself taking a crop. Who knows what the season my have in store. When your brood boxes are done, add a super or the bees may decide to relieve overcrowding with a swarm that might leave your hive queenless. This blanket instruction not to super or take a super of honey from first year colonies is monumentally foolish. If the bees have the required weight to survive your winter season, you gain nothing by leaving a super on.