I installed my first package almost three weeks ago and had my first thorough check today. I’m happy to see they ate most of the original pollen patty and I’ve been keeping up with the sugar syrup so they don’t go without.
As you can see from the picture, they are building comb in the empty space.
Should I add frames to the top box? 4 of the bottom frames are empty.
Should I rearrange the bottom frames to interleave empty with full frames?
Do I need to remove the comb that is above the frames completely?
If I remove the comb, can I do anything productive with it? Leave it in the hive?
Not yet, wait until they have built all of the frames first.
No, you don’t want to break up the order they are drawing them in or divide the brood area.
You should, yes. If you are able and the chunks are big enough, you can rubber band it into one of the empty frames in your brood box. Unless you need that empty space for your feeder to fit, you should remove that upper, empty box.
Hi Fred, what I would do is remove the chunks of comb (I would just put it in a wax bin) before putting a hive mat over the frames. A hive mat can be a piece of vinyl floor covering cut to fit over the frames so as to allow a bee space all around it. By using a bee mat like I’m describing, the bees will concentrate on building below it, they wont build above it until the bottom is full. cheers
