> > The other day I opened my brood super to check everything,
> > and the bees had made comb over the frame. So much so
> > that it was stuck on the lid.

> Scrape out the wild comb- if you leave it there it is just
> going to cause problems again when they reattach it to the lid.

Not all bees have heard about bee space since AFAIK no living bee has ever met
Langstroth and have a great deal of difficulty opening our books.  Bee space is
a principle that man has declared bees will obey, yet there are many different
types of bees and each nest is an individual.

Bees will stick down lids from time to time even if the bee space is 'correct'.
You may wish to read about bee space and the various opinions about it in the
BEE-L archives at http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/BEE-L/ by entering the words
bee space into the search pane.

While many beekeepers choose to enforce bee space and scrape off any offending
piece of comb, others of us have a much more lax view and see these
constructions as the expressions of individual decorating taste they really are
and tolerate them if they are not actually dangerous to the bees or they do not
stick things up too much.  In fact they can be useful for those of us who are
looking for ways to work with the bees and see ourselves as their allies, rather
than their masters.  As it happens, there is an artist in Manitoba, Canada by
the name of Aganetha Dick (no relation) that works with hives of bees to create
new and wonderful shapes of comb that she presents to the (human) public as
'Art'.

I don't do that, and I am not even sure I approve, but I do like a bit of ladder
comb on top bars because we use a pillow rather than a wooden inner cover, and
the wax lifts the pillow enough that the bees can pass freely under it.  You can
see pictures at various places in my diary at
http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/Diary if you so wish.

allen

---
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
                -- Niels Bohr