Wild comb built under frames - now what?

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banjomorris

New Bee
Joined
Aug 10, 2009
Messages
12
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Location
Romsey, Hampshire, uk
Hive Type
Langstroth
Number of Hives
2
Well, it must have been a case of me putting in regular sized frames into a deep-frame langstroth hive. However, the fact is that I now have a brood box with frames that have wild comb constructed on the bottom of the frames, including brood, and I don't know what to do with it.....! How do I revert to deep frames? The colony is a collected prime swarm and I have just put QE and super on as brood box filling.
 
leave it, and just be careful on inspections. you can migrate it to the outside as you put new foundation in

in any event i allways use one smaller frame to produce drone comb under the frame
 
Is it drone brood? If so it might be an opportunity to practice drone brood culling as part of your varroa management. A non chemical way of reducing varroa too.

Otherwise if you can't bear the brace comb under the frames, you can only change the frames bit by bit, or change the brood box. Sorry.
 
I'm getting this on the central frames of a poly Langstroth where the brood box has a lower section in the centre for the OMF. The bees see some extra room downwards and go for it.

I don't mind at all, but if I wanted to put another brood box under this one, the tops of the frames underneath wouldn't give this space and I'd have to slice off the extra comb to make them fit.

At the moment, I want them to have as much brood space as possible, so I'm letting them get on with it.

FG
 
They always do it Firegazer and the vast majority of the time it is drone brood so every now and again slice it off and you are doing a power of good to the varroa situation. I open it and check for varroa and it is a very handy way to keep an eye on how it goes.

Pleased to say the last ones I looked at were devoid of mites at all! Very good to see.

PH
 
PH,
that's what an Engineer would call "an elegant solution" :)

Guess it also gives them some building work to do if they get confined by the weather.

I'll give it a go, thanks.

FG
 

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