Yesterday I opened the hive for the first time since the bees have actually drawn out any comb. The comb is so beautiful! Unexpectedly, though, it's wavy and crossing over onto more than one bar. I ended up breaking a piece off (sorry girls) which I left inside the hive so they could maybe recycle it and take the brood out, or let them hatch, or whatever they will do with broken comb. I want to let them do their natural bee thing, but I also want to be able to open the hive to inspect things and eventually harvest some honey, so I found this posting (http://www.biobees.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2763) who's advice I think I will follow. Basically, I will move all the crossed comb all together further back into the hive and give the bees empty bars toward the front to try to start straight and I will check more often to try to help them along.
It's a beautiful sunny day today with at least 4 rainy days to follow, so I will give this a try today while I can get in there. I'll keep you posted on the project.
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When I opened the hive I saw that the small piece of comb that I broke was actually bigger than I thought. The bees seemed to be working on it in some way, so that's good. I made sure that any brace comb was cut away from the sides and moved the two bars with comb closest to the back all the way back, they were the wavy ones. Then there were two in the front near the entrance that were really straight, but I moved them to the back along with the other and placed 9 empty bars toward the entrance. I guess I angered one little bee because she stung me! It's my first sting from our girls, and I guess I'm glad I got it out of the way. She got me on the wrist right where my sleeve ended. I took pictures as I went, so will try to post them soon.
ReplyDeleteAnd one other good thing to note - the ants are gone!