Observation Top-Bar Hive One Week In

I opened up the fabulous observation window top-bar hive today to make sure the bees weren’t drawing any crazy comb. These bees are my heroes! They have drawn the combs perfectly straight and hanging from the tab on each top-bar (instead of, as has always been my experience, stringing wax comb from one top-bar to the next). To top it off (sorry!), they’ve drawn five combs already and are at work on the sixth.

I decided to play it safe by removing some of the extra top-bars from the box, so that the bees have less room to play with for the time being. They now have a total of ten frames (six currently in use and four blanks) sandwiched between divider boards. This limited space will hopefully help keep them on their good comb-drawing behavior.

I haven’t fed this swarm at all, but you can see the bees’ curing nectar toward the top of the comb.