# Second inspection, minor repair to cross combing



## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

Most common cause of cross comb is hive is not properly level.Sometimes a hive will settle and that knocks it out of level.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

One good comb leads to another. One bad comb leads to another. Try to have the last comb (from which the next will be parallel) straight. Feed empty bars in between good straight brood combs. If you don't have any good combs, build frames and rubber band combs into the frames. It takes straight combs to get straight combs... so you have to get straight combs by whatever means you can and make sure your new combs are being drawn parallel to those good combs. The three most important combs in the hive are the two in the middle of the brood nest that you keep putting empty bars between until they are drawn, and the last one from which the next one will be drawn.


----------



## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

the brood circled in the red and the blue are both drone caps. It just looks a little different when there are empty cells around a drone cell. Looks like your package is off to a good start. Wish I could get more photos of my bees on my flowers. That's one of the reasons that I started keeping bees. Maybe I need to quit my day-job


----------



## Colleen O. (Jun 5, 2012)

There is a picture of the hardware cloth bar I was speaking of in this thread: http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...ng-hairclips&highlight=patbeek+hardware+cloth

I guess I figured you would do a search on here to find it. Search seems to be very underused.


----------



## dynemd (Aug 27, 2013)

This One?


----------



## msscha (Jan 4, 2014)

Colleen O. said:


> There is a picture of the hardware cloth bar I was speaking of in this thread: http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...ng-hairclips&highlight=patbeek+hardware+cloth
> 
> I guess I figured you would do a search on here to find it. Search seems to be very underused.


Thank you for the link. And you're right -- I didn't search. I will be more diligent in the future. Tomorrow, I'll remove the thing I put in, unless by some miracle, the comb is straight!


----------



## Patricia (May 3, 2014)

Michael Bush said:


> The three most important combs in the hive are the two in the middle of the brood nest that you keep putting empty bars between until they are drawn, and the last one from which the next one will be drawn.


HI Michael, What I'm two weeks new. What does this mean?


----------



## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

Michael is saying that once you get the comb straight you can put an empty bar in the middle of the brood nest and they will draw it out. If the two bars it is between are straight it will be straight.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>HI Michael, What I'm two weeks new. What does this mean? 

If E is empty bars and M is messed up comb and B is good brood comb and your colony looks something like this:
12345678901234567890123456789012
EEEEEMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

The NEXT combs built will be in position 5 and 16. Since those two are messed up the next two combs will be messed up.

If you make three frames and cut three of those messed up combs out and tie them into the frames with rubber bands or string or wire, you now have three straight combs and you can now rearrange it something like this:

12345678901234567890123456789012
MMBEBBEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

The next two combs to be drawn will be #4 and #7 and since #4 is between two straight brood combs it will be a straight comb for sure. Since #7 is next to a straight comb it will likely be a straight comb. Bees build parallel combs, so you want the next place they build a comb to have a straight comb next to it or, better, one on each side of it. This only works with brood comb because it's a fixed width, but can work between drawn capped honey comb. It does not work with open honey comb one each side of an empty bar as they often draw the combs deeper instead of building another.


----------

