[brian spilsbury]

My plan is to use all single brood chambers. I started with 2 - 3 frame nucs and no drawn comb so my start was a little slow...not to mention the cool weather hasn't helped. My bees are on to 6 frames now and I'm getting a good pop. explosion happening now.
I placed a second deep with foundation onto each brood chamber hoping they would start to move up and they did. I want the bees to work on drawing comb in both chambers more than I want honey however I have added an excluder to both colonies. There are now bees above the excluder with the queen still below.

These bees build comb everywhere! The 2 chambers have comb joining the top and bottom frames together so opening the hive up is an adventure. Do I have too much bee space?
I have been scraping the stuff off and leaving it in the top chamber so, if wanted, they can move the nectar and reuse the wax. Is this a good plan? In order to install the excluder a lot had to be removed anyways.

 

[Michael Bush]

Reasons for burr comb between boxes:

Too much space. The space between the top bar of the bottom and the bottom bar of the top should be no more than 3/8"

Too little space. The space betweeen the top bar of the botom and the bottom bar of the top should be no less than 1/4"

Too skinny of a top bar. A bar that is any less than 3/4" will cause more burr between the boxes. This was observed by CC Miller and others back in the 1800s. PermaComb (which has no top bar), Pierco (which has a very thin top bar), DE frames (which have a very thin top bar) and any of the split top bars like Walter T. Kelly has for comb production, will all have a lot of burr between the boxes.

Overcrowding. When bees are crowded they fill every little space with comb.

Bees that like to build burr. Some bees, regardless of race, just like to build a lot of burr no matter what you do. Luckily they are the exception.

 

[bjerm2]

I have a question why did you put an excluder in the hives? Let the queen have the two boxes for brood. You want the bees to have a large work force and for winter. If you scrape burr comb by all means remove it from the hive. All they will do is use the wax like glue (guess your finding that out now). I go to my apiary with a 3 lbs coffee can. No not to drink coffee there

, it's just the right size per apiary to put the burr comb in there and take it home for rendering. If there is to much honey in it you can leave it out for a while and let the bees clean up the can for you. Bee space(?) well I don't know if it's leaving the excluder in with burr comb or really bee space. I assume that the burr comb left behind with the bees trying to squeeze thru the excluder makes them glue everything together.
Dan

 

[Michael Bush]

>have been scraping the stuff off and leaving it in the top chamber so, if wanted, they can move the nectar and reuse the wax. Is this a good plan? In order to install the excluder a lot had to be removed anyways.

I just remove it altogether. They seldom seem to reuse it, they will more likely connect it in places and ways you don't want.

I have a lot of PermaComb and the ALWAYS burr it up to the lid and between boxes. I USUALLY scrape it off if I have time and the bees are in a good mood. I often just leave it if I'm in a hurry or the bees are not happy.

 

[Kosh]

My last time working the hive (last week) I scraped out a lot of burr comb. I keep the white burr comb in a container for future use. They had drawn burr comb between some of the frames of the upper and lower brood chambers. The wax of these was brown because it was being used to raise brood. I felt really bad about removing it because it had brood and some capped cells, so I tried an experiment. I took the burr comb pieces, brood and all and put them on the entrance to the hive. The bees immediately began working to dismantle the burr comb. Once they had finished this work (in about a day and a half) there was no wax and no brood on the ground in front of the hive. This leads me to believe that they recycled the wax and moved the brood back inside to new chambers. Anybody every try this?

Peace,
Jason

 

[Michael Bush]

I usually scrape it off from the back and it ends up in a pile in the front. When I come back it's usually still there.

 

[brian spilsbury]

Wow, this is great! Ask a question and get answers.

I think there is too much space between the bottoms of the top box and the tops of the bottom box. I haven't measured it but I bet it's 3/4 inch or more. With the excluder in it will be cut in half. That should stop the burr, I hope.

All of my honey supers are shallows (6 5/8") and the frames for those will not leave as much room between them.

I don't want to use double brood chambers. The University of Guelph apiculture department has been using singles successfully for many years now and I can get a lot of help from local keepers around here with that experience. I only put the deeps on this year to get the bees to draw comb. This will hopefully get my girls going faster next year when I split them into the new chanbers with drawn comb.

Brian