# The girls won't move.



## Kathleen Bourn (Oct 31, 2014)

This is my second year beekeeping. I love the bees but I also love building stuff for them. 
I had some scrap material and decided to build 2/ 4 box Warres, each with a quilt/feeder box on top and SBB. The bars are V shaped (rough) with some wax rubbed on them.
The third week in April I installed 3lb. packages in each. I started each hive with 2 boxes and installed the bees on top of the top box. I wired a piece of drawn comb to the center bar in both boxes to help them out with a ladder. They both built out the top box with beautiful white wax within a couple of weeks. The picture shown is after just one week in the top box. 
It's now been 6 weeks and the top boxes are absolutely packed but they aren't building anything in the bottom box. 
Since I have 2 identical hives I thought I'd experiment. #1 hive I switched the positions of the boxes putting the full one on the bottom. #2 hive I added a third box on top the full second box. Still no movement on either one!
Last week I tried moving one of their built out combs to the empty box. So far there are a few more bees in the empty boxes but not a lot of comb building.
Should I worry about this or just chill? Any Ideas?
(Thanks for this great forum, it really helps us new beeks!)

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## MuttBee Mama (Apr 9, 2014)

Hey Kathleen - I'm in year 2 too, but dealt with this last year so I can tell you how the girls sorted this out in my yard.

It took moving empty comb into whatever boxes I wanted them to occupy, but even then it was sometimes slow going. What was more bizarre was the strong preferences each hive had over building up or down. I would nadir a full hive and get nothing. Nada. Zip. So I would super the same hive instead and up they would go. But then the hive next to that would only want move down, not up. I could never predict which way they wanted to move and it was the devil's own chore to force them where they didn't want to be. Go figure. Eventually everybody got what they wanted and it all settled out fine, but moving comb definitely helped push things along.


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## Kathleen Bourn (Oct 31, 2014)

Thanks for the reply!
Right now I have one hive with 3 boxes on it and the bees in the FULL middle box. There is one frame of old comb that I attached to the bar in the first and third boxes plus one bar of theirs (mostly honey) in the third box.
The other hive has the FULL box of bees on the bottom and the second box has one bar of old comb and one of theirs (mostly honey)
It will be an interesting to see which configuration they prefer. 
As you say, I think they're going to do whatever they want. I'm trying to just leave them alone but it's hard.


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