Thursday, September 8, 2011

Fixed Comb

It's been a few days.  So I took a quick look into Melissa yesterday to check on the progress of the divided comb frames.  That story can be read by clicking on this link, (Divided Frames).  I'm happy to say it worked.  The bees have secured the lose comb to the top bar on all the frames.  They continue to draw the rest of the comb out as well.

Rubber bands held the comb in place
You can see where they chewed the rubber bands
Almost completely drawn out
The bees are supposed to secure the comb to the bar before they chew through the rubber bands.  That definitely seems to be the case here.  Though they are drawing out Drone comb I'm sure that will be fixed in the coming weeks.  Once the comb is drawn out I'll remove the rubber bands; either from the frames or the bottom of the hive.

It's fun to learn a new trick.

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3 comments:

immwia said...

Sounds likes bees are being bees. Nice job on the divided frames.

Hemlock said...

Yeah it worked. I was worried the comb would slump but the rubber bands did their job.

Jones said...

As an fyi, I have done a bunch of successful cut-outs using rubber bands as you did (except that I didn't know about the trick of tying them off). In every case, they remove the rubber bands themselves (i.e. I have never had to remove them).