# opening brood nest



## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

Sure. Just don't do it endlessly. You have to let the bees arrange things the way they want eventually. The bees will want to reign in the queen's laying at some point and fill combs with honey. If you keep putting bars in the nest, you're forcing them to expand the broodnest, as they'll have brood on either side of that new comb.

If you add more, I would stop after one or two and let them do their thing from there.

Adam


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## blist (Jun 15, 2010)

amazing how fast they build when you open the brood nest up, we had a hive that was at 7 bars, they just weren't really building, they had size of a dime started on bar 8 wasn't really progressing for days...moved it between two bars and it's 10% built in 2 days


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## callsign222 (Nov 9, 2010)

It gets addictive, that's for sure, especially when you can see through a window and watch the progress. I'm sitting on my hands now and letting them expand the comb down the hive on their own now, but it does take a certain level of self restraint from dropping new bars or barely drawn comb into the nest and watch it take off....


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

When they're really strong, they can get to producing comb at a rate of almost a whole one per day. But as I said, you don't want to do it endlessly. You have to let them get to focusing on honey production at some point, otherwise you'll get this sprawling nest, and end up working against yourself. Remember that the nest produces more bees. You pop new comb in the middle of the nest, the queen's just going to lay in it. I think once you have 10 bars or so in a new 4 foot hive, you have to let them build comb on their own and get the honey storage going. 

That's not to say that you couldn't insert a bar between combs here and there in the honey area along the way later too... Or even put bars at the outer edge of the nest - where they are starting to store. But I think it can be problematic to just keep putting empty bars into the middle of the nest.

I kept putting in the empty bars last year, and ended up with an enormous brood nest, a four foot hive that was full end-to-end, and then had to split as they started building queen cells.

That's my opinion - and I'm only in my second year here, so take it or leave it.

Adam


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## blist (Jun 15, 2010)

I pretty much just wanted to give this hive a kick as they had seemed to stop building. One empty bar in the brood nest seemed to do the trick, they are about 50% on that and starting on a new one on the outer edge as well. I won't be adding another empty bar at this point. This particular hive is a golden mean backyardhive so it is far from 4 foot. It only has 8 bars built (or being built) so far.


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

When I set up a new tbh I open up the hive every couple days to make sure they get the comb started right, and as I add new bars I check them frequently. Insert new brood bars between two bars that are already drawn out straight and you will get nice combs. When adding a new honey bar put it between two straight capped or nearly completely capped bars. I find that if I put a new honey bar between two honey bars that are not completely built out or built out but not capped yet, the bees will sometimes build out the combs on either side of the new bar much thicker and wavy looking which kind of messes things up a bit.


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