Cross and brace comb

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greenmeaney

New Bee
Joined
Sep 9, 2020
Messages
22
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9
Location
thetford
Number of Hives
3
I have had acouple of people ring me about cross combing in TBhives . Ihave had a slight problem of the little darlings going of the straight and narrow I.E building crooked comb which I have sorted by cutting and straightening, usually after bar twelve,but two people have severe cross comb problems. The way I deal with this is to move cross combed or heavily braced bars to the rear of the hive and when capped or emptied remove combs and clean the bars. It got me wondering if hive orientation may have an effect on the direction they build comb. I noticed when I had nationals unless the hives were level they would build down ignoring foundation as they build by gravity and wondered if they also orientate comb according to sun position. Any studies been done?
 
Conventional studies say there is no preferential direction of comb, either with respect to the entrance or the compass direction.

However, some would say otherwise. Why not turn the hive to align the top bars with the direction they chose and see what happens?
 
I ran TBHs in differing directions. No difference.
 
Standard hives or tbh I’ve never found a difference in the direction they face. They are normally most problematic for cross comb when first being established. Once up and running you can use ready drawn each side of new bars. I’ve never bothered levelling hives bar by eye, with a tbh just pay a bit more attention.
 
I have had acouple of people ring me about cross combing in TBhives . Ihave had a slight problem of the little darlings going of the straight and narrow I.E building crooked comb which I have sorted by cutting and straightening, usually after bar twelve,but two people have severe cross comb problems. The way I deal with this is to move cross combed or heavily braced bars to the rear of the hive and when capped or emptied remove combs and clean the bars. It got me wondering if hive orientation may have an effect on the direction they build comb. I noticed when I had nationals unless the hives were level they would build down ignoring foundation as they build by gravity and wondered if they also orientate comb according to sun position. Any studies been done?
If you've got combs just running in the wrong direction it won't help - but I find that the slight curve you get after comb 12 etc can be managed with a few spacer strips between the top bars. Same applies to the comb towards the end of the season which I'm finding tends to be a bit thicker/deeper.
BIAB
 

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