Hi all, I’m very new to beekeeping and just went to do my first hive inspection after 7 days and the inner lid is completely connected to all of the frames with comb. I can’t pull the lid off without pulling out all of the frames. What do I do and how to prevent this in the future? Thanks for your help!
Hi and welcome to the forum!
What I would try in this situation is to slowly pry up the inner cover with one hand while pushing down each frame end that rises up as you go. This will cause the connecting comb to tear apart, so if you go very slowly and use your smoker you won’t hurt many bees. You could help it along once there’s enough room to scrape the comb away from the underside of the cover using your hive tool. A suited-up helper could make it easier by doing the prying/lifting as you go. Make sure to have a plate or bucket for the comb you’ll scrape off, which might very well have nectar in it or even capped honey!
Once you have the cover off you can smoke the top bars and gently scrape the comb off of them, and put the chunks carefully aside in your container.
This colony might be quite ready for more room by the sounds of it!
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Hi and welcome to the forum. A great way to prevent this from happening going forward is to replace the inner cover with a hive mat. The mat (a piece of vinyl or thin plastic) sits over the frames with a bee space all around it. That way, as you remove the roof, the mat will not come away, you simply peel it back from the frames, as needed.
A bonus of this method is that the bees will propolize the roof to the honey super, which means there is no need to tie it down in case of high winds.
I have used this method for the 36 years that I’ve kept bees, with not one roof blowing off in that time.
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Thank you! This was very helpful!!
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The other option to help separate the inner cover is to make a “garrote” from wire and two handles that you can pull through cutting the wax. It can be a useful tool to have on hands as this is also a common problem in less frequently inspected hives and the frames are attached to the queen excluder (top and bottom).
Adam
Dental floss works too! 
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Thank you all! I was able to get the frames off the lid without too much disturbance and added the honey super since all of the frames were built out and full of bees. Excited for my next inspection!
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