At 10:29 AM 8/27/01 +0100, you wrote:

We can verify Graham's observation - we have often seen this in our large
observation hive - the bees cut down the height of the cells to provide
adequate space, and they do move wax around.  We have also seen them
partially pull out frames in outdoor, full-sized hives - then during a
heavy nectar flow, we have seen them cut down the partially drawn cells,
sometimes tearing them down almost to the foundation.  Adjacent combs were
being rapidly capped.  Our guess, when the flow is coming in fast, they
grabbed readily available wax to build up and cap cells, rather than simply
draw out more comb.  We discovered this while digitizing areas of wax and
profiling how long it took them to pull out foundation.  These were
commercial beehives in large apiaries.  When we looked at the data, we
found that during the flow we lost drawn comb (the areas were reduced).
Closer inspection showed us that foundation that they had been drawing out,
but not completed, suddenly reduced dramatically.

Cheers

Jerry


 What I found
>interesting was each bee cutting down the cell would walk between 4-8cm away
>clutching a wax fragment and attach it to the edge of another cell.