Well I am back to report on the small frames. How 3 years has passed wow.This post should have got the grey matter going sorted me
but I didn’t have the brains to think it through. What am I talking about…X combing.
My magical little frames so loving made has continued to produce an unholy mess of X combing. I found this out on my after Winter inspection and the last time I tried to correct this I was left with an unholy mess and not much left of the brood.
I was reminded of this when I took the top brood box from my very strong hive and put on my very weak hive (sheet of newspaper in between). I decide not to do any clean up work as they were all quite happy what they were doing. Fingers crossed all works out.
However I did at long last realize what the cause of the X combing was. Called being level. Normal lang hive frames running lengthways and always hang perpendicular if the hive is level. The Flow hive put in a 3deg slope front to back but the frames are still vertical left to right.
Enter my 13 frames hanging across the Lang hive box. They are perfectly level left to right but that 3 deg slope is transferred to the frames and no wonder there is Xcomb every which way when all the bees want to do is build comb “as the plumb bob would fall”.
I am at present stuck in between normal lang frames and my little X frames. The mix has made it impossible to swap frames in and out which has been very detrimental in the lean nectar period we are having. Hence having to move the whole brood box rather than 3 or 4 frames of brood,eggs and honey.
I did think of just letting the weak hive sink or swim but didn’t have the heart. Just hope both hives now recover from the shuffle.