# comb building crooked



## leonphelps (Apr 16, 2012)

Hello,
I have a kenyan box. Newly homed queen and 4 pounds of bees. In the box two weeks. Queen took 4 days to get out of the sugar cube keeping her in. 

My bees are building comb and honey like crazy. I took the sugar water off of them a couple days ago. 

the comb keeps being built crooked and makes the top pieces of wood stick together. A couple days ago, I took a knife and cut each one apart and they seem to have built it back as one large mass. 

Any ideas why or suggestions to stop?

I have comb in 8 rails in two weeks.


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## DPLONG (Feb 21, 2012)

Did you buy your hive, or build it yourself? The important thing to get the bees started, which they already seem to be, is to have something for them to start building from. I have one top bar hive and it has a V that protrudes from the top bar. The bees built straight down from that on all but four bars. On those they went crooked. The bees should build off of the comb before, so If you have any straight comb, I'd imagine you could rearrange things to try and get them going straight and then remove the crooked when time and space allow. I'm not an expert by any means, but I know with foundationless frames in Langstroth hives, they say to make sure your hive is perfectly level. You may want to check that, I'm not sure how that will affect a TBH but it seems like it would involve all comb built by the bees. I've also heard of people talking about the orientation of the hive and that you can turn it to try and match the direction of your comb, I have no idea if that works, just throwing out some thoughts. I'm sure there are many people on here that can give you better advice than me. After I removed my four bars with cross comb and lined them back up to good straight comb they did rebuild those four bars straight.


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## newbee1025 (Sep 1, 2010)

I would think if the hive is level the comb should be also. If that's not it I have no idea.


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## robherc (Mar 17, 2012)

leonphelps said:


> I have a kenyan box.
> <snip>
> My bees are building comb and honey like crazy. I took the sugar water off of them a couple days ago.
> 
> the comb keeps being built crooked and makes the top pieces of wood stick together. A couple days ago, I took a knife and cut each one apart and they seem to have built it back as one large mass.


First off, congratulations on getting your new hive going! 

As far as the crooked combs, they're just about guaranteed to start off crooked if you don't have _something_ in place to stop them, but at least it isn't too hard to fix. You're going to need to go in and cut the combs off of your top bars, then tie them onto the bars straight with some twine/rubber bands; I like using top bars that are "trimmed" to about 7/8" to 1-1/16" through the middle, with just the last 1" on either end at 1-1/4" to 1-3/8" for spacing, this makes it easier to tie comb back on straight (and the air gap helps discourage crooked comb a little, IMO).

Once you have the combs tied back on straight, the bees will generally glue everything up nicely, then start building straight comb on the rest of the bars, parallel to the combs you just tied in.

On all your future hives, you'll want to be SURE you have some form of "comb guides" on the bars to get your bees started in the right direction. (I prefer the "popsicle stick" type guides, as I personally believe they do better at discouraging crooked comb than the triangular guides...to each their own)

Here are a few pics of some of my top bars; in the picture every-other-one has a comb guide on it (either "popsicle stick" type, or melted on bits of comb), and the rest are just in there as "spacers". In your hives, I'd suggest having at LEAST 1 comb guide for every 2 bars, and it's generally better to get them started on all bars with comb guides up front.


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## Steven Ogborn (Jun 3, 2011)

leonphelps said:


> the comb keeps being built crooked and makes the top pieces of wood stick together. A couple days ago, I took a knife and cut each one apart and they seem to have built it back as one large mass.
> 
> 
> > Are you saying that they are building combs running diagonally to the direction of the top bar?
> ...


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## leonphelps (Apr 16, 2012)

I took a warm large serated knife and went top to bottom to separate the comb. 

yes the hive is level on all planes. 

I took the hive apart and cut the crooked stuff off. Tied some of it back on with string and hair clips to try to straighten it out. 

it is a shame to waste so much comb. Probably 1/4 of my comb was crooked. 

there was white honey all over the place.


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## robherc (Mar 17, 2012)

leonphelps said:


> I took the hive apart and cut the crooked stuff off. Tied some of it back on with string and hair clips to try to straighten it out.
> 
> it is a shame to waste so much comb. Probably 1/4 of my comb was crooked.
> 
> there was white honey all over the place.


Good job, now you should have your bees on the right track.

Don't worry too much about the comb, they can always build more.

Don't worry at all about the honey mess, the bees will have that cleaned up even faster than you'd think possible!


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## Steven Ogborn (Jun 3, 2011)

Wait until you have full, hard combs before trying to cut the hair clips out.
They won't hurt anything being left in there for awhile. They're going to be built into the honey
band that will form over the top of your brood combs. Then you won't hurt or lose any brood
when you cut them out. The older the comb, the less chance of it collapsing when you do.


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## leonphelps (Apr 16, 2012)

how long til I see brood? I only saw honey and some pollen.


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## jadell (Jun 19, 2011)

On a side note, am I the only person who knows who Leon Phelps is? :lpf:


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## robherc (Mar 17, 2012)

You probably already have hundreds to thousands of eggs, just can't see 'em unless the lighting is good. Approx. 3 days later the eggs hatch into equally miniscule larvae, over the next 1-3 days the larvae start getting MUCH easier to spot


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## leonphelps (Apr 16, 2012)

I know jadell. lol the ladies man. 

Lets hope I do. So two weeks I should see them. lets hope I look early in the morning.


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## gjd (Jan 26, 2011)

I found once my TBH started building slightly skewed comb edging on to the next bar, they just didn't want to stop, and would continue building it crooked at that spot. I concluded the key was to correct it immediately-- within days, not after 1 or 2 weeks-- before they get conditioned to the comb being a certain shape/orientation at that spot. It helped that I didn't need to smoke them with solid bars (no gaps between). It is only theory; I never got mine to stop and finally just gave up and left 2 or 3 pairs of bars stuck together. The rest was straight, although often off the bar center-- same problem, once they got started they didn't stop, no matter how I tried to shim the bars. TBHs require constant attention and lots of experience.


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## leonphelps (Apr 16, 2012)

thanks for the info. I went out this AM to make sure things are not fusing together. I will keep up on it every day now.


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## gjd (Jan 26, 2011)

Be advised that after a year I was relieved to move my TBH to a Langstroth, so I'm not the best source of inspiration or advice. Once a comb was going well, it was fine and needed no attention. I wouldn't pull every bar out every day.


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## robherc (Mar 17, 2012)

leonphelps said:


> thanks for the info. I went out this AM to make sure things are not fusing together. I will keep up on it every day now.


I check mine for fusing about every 4 days during comb building...so far I'm at 100% wasted time as the bees have been following my comb guides religiously. That said, I still plan on making sure; all it really takes is sliding the bars over about 1/4" or so, one at a time...if they move, no problems; that way you don't have to tear apart their brood nest just because you (or in this case me) are feeling paranoid about crossed comb.


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## leonphelps (Apr 16, 2012)

I should say pulled apart and not pulled out.


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