# Long Term Comb Straightening



## pcooley (Apr 18, 2006)

As some of you may remember, my hive was badly cross-combed the first time I checked it. I managed to get the comb straightened out, but the bees have built most of the comb more over to one side of the bars than the other. Also, with all my newbee attempts at comb straightening, much of the comb is wavy, and they have built it wavy on down the line to preserve their bee space. As a result, the comb projects past the neighboring bar in most instances, though the attachment points are on the bar and not crossing over.

In the long run, how do I manipulate the hive so that the comb is attached to the center of the bar. I keep thinking I could do something like turn one bar around and feed a new bar between it and the neighboring comb, but then the comb next to it would be in trouble.

Now that there's a bad pattern throughout the hive, I don't know how to alter it. Currently, I have about ten bars with nothing on them. Can I feed them into the combed part in some manner to begin straightening the bee's work?

I was also gone for a week, and up near the entrance, they did curve over the bar next to them. The comb was heavy with nectar, so I just removed the part that had crossed over. (It wasn't very big, and the bees were getting upset, so I didn't want to search around for something to sew it up)l.

I guess I should go back to checking them every couple of days.


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## PA Pete (Feb 2, 2005)

I assume you're using starter strips or similar here...

Here's what I would do, but this is just me  

I would find the two best-drawn sides of comb, place them in the middle of the box with best sides facing each other, spearated by one frame width, and insert a new empty frame or starter strip frame between them and tighten them up.

Because the frame is in the center of the box, the bees should draw it quickly and because it's sandwiched between two (hopefully) reasonably good frames, they should space it properly. Once this new frame is properly drawn, repeat the process, making sure to select the best two frame faces each time, and making sure the new frame goes into the center of the box. As you get new good frames, you can pull the "bad" frames from the edges - hang onto them until you feel you have enough good drawn comb, then melt them down.

Good luck!


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## PA Pete (Feb 2, 2005)

Also, be sure your hives are level side-to-side!!!!!


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## oldgreyone (Apr 30, 2005)

What I did was cut 2 pieces of foundation (I used plastic) the right shape and size for my box. I placed these on a topbar and inserted them into the front of my box in the brood nest. Once these were drawn out I place a topbar with a starter strip in between. This resulted in beautiful comb being drawn out which I placed 2 topbars with starter strips on either side, etc. I haven't removed the wavy frames yet but am moving them further back in the hive and the bees are starting to fill them with honey. Eventually I will harvest these and melt them down. 

This might work for you too, but I don't make any guarantees. Good Luck.


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## Scot Mc Pherson (Oct 12, 2001)

First thing....don't rotate comb...Its hurts the colony for several reasons.

What you can do is find your very best comb and place that to the back of the broodnest so that the next comb built will be forced into that pattern. Then you will have two best combs. You can then insert a blank top bar inbetween them to get an even better best comb, and then out of those three pick the best and place an empty bar between those. Now you have two better best combs. Remember to number you bars before you do these manipulations so you can return the bars to their proper place. The blank bar you put in the middle of this mess will be mapped between those, and so you might want to leave them alone. Next spring before buildup time, you can stick one at a time, more empty bars in there until you have say 6 halfway decent combs, then rotate all the old combs out of the brood nest and place them at the back of the hive to let all brood emerge (3 weeks max). Remove this comb as soon as its 80% clear of brood, you can extract the honey and feed it back to the bees if its unripe.

With the 6ish good combs you have you can spread them out accordian style before the next buildup. The bees will abandon some of them while they cluster in one spot but will fill the blanks quickly and will build up quickly to fill 10-12 bars full of brood. Then you are back on track, but it takes two years. That's really ok anyway though because it takes 2 years for a colony to truly mature anyway.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

The best way to get straight combs is to have straight combs. A catch 22, of course. But if you can straighten some out (pushing or cutting etc.) or if you can make some swarm catching frames for your top bar to tie some comb into that was crooked then you have some that is straight. The best way to get straight comb is between two straight brood combs.


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## pcooley (Apr 18, 2006)

Thanks everyone. All good ideas, and I appreciate the warning not to rotate comb. I don't have any foundation, so I'm not going to try that idea -- right off anyway. And the problem is more the fact that each comb is offset so that the cells slightly overlap the bar next to it, though the attachment points, for the most part, do not. So straightening the waves out may help, but may be more trouble than it's worth. So I'll try Scott's idea. I'll find the comb that overlaps the least, move it to the back of the brood area, (by which, I assume you mean the furthest away from the entrance), and I will start feeding top bars in between.

Since the heart of the brood area seems the worst, can I bring better comb in from the honey storage area and place it near the front of the brood area? I can see the honey storage area as the straight-comb factory at this point, but I guess I wouldn't want to put a straight comb of capped honey in the middle of the brood area?

Thanks again.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>but I guess I wouldn't want to put a straight comb of capped honey in the middle of the brood area?

It would serve no purpose and would divide the brood nest. Even if you uncapped it it wouldn't be of any advantage, although, if you uncapped it first, the bees would empty it faster.

An empty bar works well.


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## pcooley (Apr 18, 2006)

But putting an empty bar between two bars on which the comb is offset the same amount in the same direction would just result in another comb offset the same amount. (They seem to be building to preserve the right bee space and ignoring my comb guides. My initial straightening of the original cross-comb must not have been well centered on the bar).

To really straighten it out, I feel that I'll probably have to build another hive, which I'm planning to do anyway, and use perfectly centered comb from the new hive, combined with empty bars, to start getting straight comb in the old hive. But I hope that I have enought comb that is not offset too much that I can follow Scott's advice and begin remedying the problem at hand in a small way without a new hive.

I assume, if I had a perfectly centered brood comb from a new hive, that I could just brush the bees off and put it in the old hive without the bees rejecting the capped brood.

[ May 30, 2006, 11:04 AM: Message edited by: pcooley ]


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## MichaelW (Jun 1, 2005)

<I assume,....

yes


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>But putting an empty bar between two bars on which the comb is offset the same amount in the same direction would just result in another comb offset the same amount. (They seem to be building to preserve the right bee space and ignoring my comb guides. My initial straightening of the original cross-comb must not have been well centered on the bar).

Yes.

But while they will build the first comb on your guide, usually, they will space combs the way they want to. That's why I make my brood bars 1 1/4" wide and my honey 1 1/2" wide. What is the spacing on your bars?


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## pcooley (Apr 18, 2006)

My bars are all 35 mm wide. I went in today, and placed some empty bars in, what I hope are, judicious places. Top Bar Hives seem to be solid grounds for learning by doing.

Looking it over again today, I notice that the comb really only overlaps in one bulge which is being propagated down the length of the hive. It's not a fatal flaw, and I hope I can encourage it out of existence. Unfortunately, the bulge is in the middle of each bar. If it were on the end, I would just trim the wax off and retrain the comb. It seems a bit trickier to cut the middle of a comb out for the same purpose.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>My bars are all 35 mm wide. 

Which is 1 3/8". 1 1/4" = 32mm.

>It seems a bit trickier to cut the middle of a comb out for the same purpose. 

Yes it is. But if you mess around with it you'll find it's VERY difficult to straighten new comb full of honey. On the other hand, it's not so hard to straighten brood comb, especially if it's a little more firm.


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## Scot Mc Pherson (Oct 12, 2001)

Actually as far as honey or brood is concerned. Brood comb is really easier to keep straight. Honey Comb because they way it is builtout and capped has no limitation to depth of cells. There is nothing growing in them that requires they remain a certain depth. In a well developed colony, your honey combs will be the ones that waver most often.

The best results have been gotten from 1 1/4 inch top bars (32mm) for the broodnest and 1 1/2 inch (38mm) for the honey comb.


And truly forget reversing comb orientation. Its really bad for the bees and really bad for nest development. Once you reverse a comb and the bees build more comb within the broodnest, you have doomed the hive to build double oriented combs for the rest of that's brood nest's existence. The bees pattern off of other comb in the hive and if you reverse the comb, that pattern is reversed as well. Its most noticeable as double lobing that doesn't meet very well where the lobes join and you loose a lot of potential brooding space.

What most of us do is number the top of our top bars at one end so we know where it belongs and how its suposed to be returned to the hive.


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