> I'm not sure why precisely. Others have observed a much wider spacing
> between combs used to store honey outside the brood area in feral nests.
> What I may be seeing is the bees transitioning to that kind of spacing.
>
> Regards
> Dennis


I cut mine at 1 3/8".  I am beginning to see widening of the comb/bar
spacing due to bees getting trapped & crushed between top bars.  So far, it
seems to be around an additional 1/8", which is not a problem.

I built my TBH's to accept standard frames as well, so I could use "off the
shelf" nucs to start.  One standard deep frame was accidentally spaced a bit
wide, and the comb is now about 2 1/4" thick at the top.  I'd guess it
weighs around 15 pounds or more.  The bees don't seem to care.

 I had my first "oops" with a top bar recently.  I was inspecting a partial
comb with honey and some drone brood, and did something I'd done many times
before without incident.  I held the top bar with the comb above the bar to
inspect the back of the comb.  Suddenly, without notice, the entire comb
tipped sideways and plopped on the ground.  I won't do that again : (
Fortunately the comb was still quite edible, so the kids and friends dined
on a few pounds of fresh honey comb.

An interesting observation I made recently:  I was making some temporary
splits into nuc boxes, but was short on deep foundation.  I took some extra
unwired drone foundation I had, cut it into strips, and anchored it to the
top bar of standard deep frames.  When I transferred the frames/bees into
these nucs, within minutes bees moved into the now familiar comb-drawing
mode I have seen in my top bar hives (they moved directly to the foundation
strips at the top and started to cluster).  It was very fast, telling me
that bees are much more aware of their surroundings than we might think.
I'm interested to see how well they draw comb without foundation in standard
frames.

Anyone else try this?

Todd.

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